Gym Contracts

**Evergrey** · Posted On: 6/13/2011 2:14pm

Mine is $70 a month, currently with a "get your first two months for the price of one" starting deal. Up to 4 classes a week, if one wants to really punish one's self. No contracts. Everyone who teaches there has a day job.
For a long time our Shihan taught out of military bases, and dues were like $15, $20 a month or so, and it was mostly for military personnel and their families, though exceptions were sometimes made. Too bad so many bases have closed down around here. :/

**judoka_uk** · Posted On: 6/13/2011 2:25pm

My primary Judo club back home operates out of their own rented place in an industriial estate with two permanent mat areas with sprung floors. They charge £18 a month and that allows you to train at all the session (3 sessions a week).

The other two clubs charge £2.50/$4 a session and £4.00/$6.50 a session and have 2 or 3 sessions a week so depending on how much you train between £25/$40 and £60/$100 a month. You can't pay monthly at either of them you just flip petty cash at the start of the session.

Between £2.50 and £5.00 a session is normal with the bigger the names/ achievements of the coaches and or the higher the cost of the area the higher the session charge.

In Judo its important to remember that kids basically massively subsidise adult training fees which helps keep them low. Most Judo clubs have around 40-50 kids practicing and only 10-15 adults. Your average kickboxing or BJJ club has a lot of adults, but not too many kids.

The general ethos of Judo that you only charge what it takes to keep the lights on and the mats in repair also plays a factor too.

**Kouch** · Posted On: 6/13/2011 2:41pm

i live out near the Indiana University. they teach martial arts classes as part of the Kinesiology program. so you can actually get a credit for college! i started doing tai chi out there on the weekends with a buddy of mine. they also have fencing, judo,BJJ,and taekwondo classes. and theyre offered 4 days a week. its..wait for this..40 dollars a semester. so 80 for the YEAR. i was dumb-founded. im assuming because its through the school is why its so cheap. but my instructors is a fulltime Kinesiology teacher. so i dont think he gets paid much for the tai chi classes. if any. heres a link though! http://www.indiana.edu/~iutaichi/

**judoka_uk** · Posted On: 6/13/2011 2:44pm

Originally Posted by Kouch

judo,BJJ... theyre offered 4 days a week. its..wait for this..40 dollars a semester. so 80 for the YEAR

And yet you do Wing Chun.

Looks like the University of Indiana needs to tighten up its entry standards.

**ty5** · Posted On: 6/13/2011 4:47pm

In every martial art I have trained, the instructer has always been very sure to collect everyones fees, in the local Judo club they forget to do it half the time, but we always make sure we pay, the 4 instructers have a combined age of about 260 so that probably has something to do with it, they just don't care as long as the hall can be paid for.

**Gibbon** · Posted On: 6/13/2011 5:24pm

My uni judo club was £5 a month for students, £15 for non students, for up to 5 sessions a week depending on how good you were.
Now I'm on about £90 a month for Judo + BJJ, 7 sessions a week. Fucking London prices :'(
Neither really had contracts, just a month is a convenient chunk of time to pay for up front. The Budokwai is something painful like £8 a session.

**The Juggernoob** · Posted On: 6/13/2011 5:51pm

I pay £4 twice a week for Judo, and £5 each for Muay Thai, and JJ. I pay £15 a month for a membership in a spit and sawdust weights gym.

**Danno997** · Posted On: 6/13/2011 6:05pm

I used to train at a small school. There was an option to pay monthly, or in 6month/1yr blocks, and I chose the 6months at a time option just to not have to remember the checkbook every month. Easier on the instructor too, since I came to find out there was ALOT of chasing people who forgot it was the 1st of the month and dues were due.

Now I train at a large school (has to be at least a couple hundred students) with multiple workout floors for MMA, BJJ, Muay Thai, and Karate...can you imagine having to chase everybody every month to pay up? They do 1 yr contracts with automated credit card billing. I'm fine with it.

**yli** · Posted On: 6/13/2011 7:46pm

The McDojo I trained TKD in was $75 a month for 3 classes a week. The Krav Maga place I train at can run you anywhere from $120-$250 depending on how much you take, mostly because the BJJ and Judo classes there cost about $100 a month extra (to pay the groundfighting instructor). Other gyms of comparable quality in the area cost about the same, mainly because they operate out of strip malls, which charge a ludicrous amount of rent given the property values in the Baltimore/DC area.

The cheapest clubs around my area are the University of Maryland judo and boxing clubs, but they're probably only for students. The Parkour club is free, but I'm hesitant to call Parkour a martial art.

**TEA** · Posted On: 6/13/2011 8:01pm

Omega, thanks for that. While I haven't owned a school, I have worked as an instructor at a couple and been privy to the business aspect of the schools in question. Both offered contracts (3 month, 6 month and 12 month) at a reduced rate over month to month as an incentive, but did not require anyone to sign a contract. One of these schools is still up and running in Hawai'i (Pacific Taekwondo) and the other (USA Martial Arts Institute) is now defunct. The collapse of USA Martial Arts had less to do with contracts and billing issues and more to do with just crappy management and an increasingly un-hands off approach to teaching by the owner.