Has anyone heard of this group

[topgun3442]

I was curious if anyone has ever heard of or been associated with this group. The companies name is Premier Martial Arts (www.pmaschools.com). I believe they are suppose to run schools as far as the business aspect is concerned. My instructor is thinking about working with this group and I was curious if they were a legit company. Any information would help out a lot.

[Cliff Hargrave]

I just read about it in a martial arts professional magazine. It's a marking group that transforms your school into their cookie cutter idea. Same uniforms, equipment, curriculim, right down to the decorations on the wall. Kind of like an instant McDojo.

http://www.pmaschools.com/images/videos/pma/player.htm

[DragonMind]

Latest marketing idea to come out of United. They are trying to sell franchises with a set curriculum, instructor training, marketing plans, etc. The idea is that the franchise owners can do national marketing that individual schools can't. Although I wouldn't want to do it myself, we need to keep an eye on this thing. People laughed at Wayne Huzienga and Sam Walton but look at us now.

[James O'Neill]

"People laughed at Wayne Huzienga and Sam Walton but look at us now."

...We seem to be lacking a puking smiliey so these will have to do: :rolleyes: :mad:

*Perhaps a proactive approach would be helpful - something like a full spread article in Black Belt about what a travesty the McDojo concept is & how it is hurting "Real" martial arts schools & martial artists.

I think Barry is on to something that this could really be a threat - add to it the concept of mandatory certification and we've got big problems IMO.

I can see it now:

"Excuse me Mr. aspiring martial art school owner but where is your McDojomart certification? We're afraid you can't open a school in this State (or we are afraid you can't get insurance) without the McCertification. So go and see Mr. xxxx about obtaining your "papers" or we are going to have to shut you down."

[DragonMind]

*Perhaps a proactive approach would be helpful - something like a full spread article in Black Belt about what a travesty the McDojo concept is & how it is hurting "Real" martial arts schools & martial artists.
Never happen. They would never hurt their advertising base that way.

[Jared Sutton]

Never happen. They would never hurt their advertising base that way.

81 different adds alone in this months issue, not counting the BlackBelt Pages. Isn't that such a cute title. :D

[Yang Wei Xin]

http://www.pmaschools.com/index.cfm?page=1 :rocket:

it says after certification you still have to do 40 HOURS A YEAR of training.

That'll make you a master!:o

[DragonMind]

http://www.pmaschools.com/index.cfm?page=1 :rocket:

it says after certification you still have to do 40 HOURS A YEAR of training.

That'll make you a master!:o
Actually, they are talking about continuing ed, not training. 40 hours/yr is pretty standard.

[Ron Davis]

Its a load of garbage. places like this make me want to puke might as well hang the golden arches on the door.

[Dennis Monk]

From the video: "Making communities better, one blackbelt at a time."
Gag me! More like making the owners richer, one blackbelt at a time.

[AZJOE]

Wow, I guess that I don't get it. I don't know that organization but I am not really sure what everyone gets so worked up about. I think standardized training, especially through the lower ranks, is designed to get everyone on the same page, build strength and confidence as well as instill the rich history of martial arts in the student. Given that these are fighting sports and have a significant risk of injury, I also don't see the problem in certifying instructors and requiring continuing education. In every art, the student starts off learning the basic technics. Through practice, they master these foundation builders and, with continuing practice are able to expand the art as they grow into mastership. I think that for our arts to grow, we need to present a program to the public that they can understand and will want to train in. Not everyone will be an ultimate fighter nor should they be expected to have that as a goal. Becoming a black belt involves mastery of not only the body but the mind and spirit as well and I see nothing wrong with making the community better, one black belt at a time as long as what we are talking about is real training with real goals and standards.

[Tang-Soo-Architect]

I looked at the video and thought (and I don't mean to cause offence here - I'm just being honest) 'Oh no, cheesy american tosh! Spare my bleeding eyes!'
Then I found they've got schools in England.
They've got a club in Chapel En Le Frith, I've been there, used to be a plague village - The Black Death and all that caper.

[DragonMind]

I've been watching this for the last six months and have come to some basic conclusions. The standardization idea is fine as far as that goes. I'm not yet convinced that their curriculum is the best it can be or is simply the most reproducible. Chain restaraunts can reproduce reliably but they certainly aren't for fine dining.

United (which is behind this version) is a billing company that makes money through quantity rather than quality. I have a somewhat jaundiced eye towards billing companies that try to sell business advice; just a little too self-serving for my taste. I don't think there are enough of them out there yet to see what the real quality is like, but we better keep an eye on them or we may wake up to find these guys running the new Dept of MA Regulation in our states...:eek:

[Jessica]

I am not really sure what everyone gets so worked up about. I think standardized training, especially through the lower ranks, is designed to get everyone on the same page, build strength and confidence as well as instill the rich history of martial arts in the student

The problem is, they often cater to the lowest comon denominator, therefore standards are kept low so that people are able to "make progress" through belt ranking. This leads to underqualified blackbelts. While there is nothing inherently wrong with having a standardized curriculum, I think the main complaint is that the standards are too low.


I also don't see the problem in certifying instructors and requiring continuing education.
I don't think there's a problem with this, and 40 hours of continuing education works out to slightly less than one hour a week of new stuff only I suspect that they get all 40 hours broken down into maybe 2-3 weeks a year.


I see nothing wrong with making the community better, one black belt at a time as long as what we are talking about is real training with real goals and standards.
I think the main concern with the McDojos is the "real training, real goals, and real standards" and most people here think that the McDojos are lacking in all three areas.

[WMKS Shogun]

I have to say, this is a fascinating little post. The idea of standardized curriculum could be a good idea. There are some schools that could benefit from the added organization of a more standardized curriculum. Overall, I am against the idea of standardization/certification for all schools. The other thing about the thing they are running is that they are using escrima, karate, kick boxing, and grappling together and while there is nothing new with schools teaching more than one art, what do they do for people with NO TRAINING in one or more of those arts who choose to join up?
For the record, does anyone in here know of/work for/ train at any of the Premier Martial Arts Academies? Anyway, for what it is worth, I am enjoying what everyone is saying in this post.

[Kwan Jang]

I beleieve that in many cases, a well organized cirriculum and business systems are what most schools need. The problem of low standards can occur, but if used properly, this type of set up can just as easily raise standards as well. The vast majority of "Mom and Pop Dojos" out there, espescially the part-timers, may complain about the quality of other schools (sometimes it's justified, sometimes it's not) but the quality of their programs and instruction is often quite low.

IMO, the successful schools of the future will incorperate cross training and be well balanced in physical skills as well as do a great job at teaching life skills. Even from a purely business standpoint, if you produce a low quality product, you are merely hurting yourself in the long run. As an instructor and school owner, the quality of my advanced students (esp. my black belts) is the quality of my product. If I want long term success in business, I feel that I must bring the best quality product to the market place.

The schools in our association have taken a similar path to what Silva and Van Over have with Premier MA (and we are probably at least one of the groups that they used to model their schools after). The main differences I see between our approach and theirs is:
1)Though we are encouraged to model the success of my instructors' school, we are given quite a bit of freedom and even encouraged to experiment with training methods, teaching methods and business procedures. If we come up with a better method, we bring it back to share. We are far less "cookie-cutter".
2)We have been cross training in the systems that have been incorperated into our cirriculum for a LONG time and all the senior instructors have as solid a background it each system as many of the people who teach these systems individually. As an example, I've been doing TKD (our base system, along w/ Hapkido and Yudo, though in honesty we've had less of an emphasis on those over the last several years) for 30 years, the FMA's for over 25, Muay Thai for 25(+), BJJ/submission grappling for 8(though different types of JJ since '71 as this was my first art), ect.
3)My instructors, KJN Ernie Reyes and KJN Tony Thompson have had the connections and created the oppurtunity for us to work with some of the best in each field (or at the very least, the best who were available to train regularly with rather than just have in for seminars). They both had a world class base in the Korean arts and when we started cross training in the FMA's, we began with Remy Presas and later Mike Innay and the West Coast Escrima society (including Dan Inosanto, Jeff Elliott, Jimmy Tacosa). We were introduced to kickboxing and MT by Benny Urquidez and now train regularly with the Fairtex camp. In BJJ, we worked regularly with Ralf and Cesar Gracie when they first came over and Frank Shamrock and Bob Cook have been teaching a black belt Submission Grappling and MMA class for several years at our Santa Clara school. When they wanted to incorperate American Kenpo into our system for the senior black belts, we worked with John Sepulveda and Jeff Speakman. Most of these guys listed have had regular training programs in our schools or at least were regualrly coming over to "play" for an extended period.

This is one of the things I can see being wrong with PMA, in that they may try to model some of our approaches to cirriculum and teaching, but our assn. has been working hard to evolve for decades and it can't be done over night. Also, it's hard to keep the quality standards high across the board when you home grow your people and only let very select individuals in. Trying to mass produce a lot of instructors w/o the background and keep high standards of quality will be a challenge.

[Maro]

Oh dear....

http://www.masites.com/images/9223/pma_06a.jpg