Opening an aikido dojo: Working the numbers in Brisbane and beyond

Our dojos been running a few years now (d!oh forgot the birthday), so part memory lane, part curiosity here’s a look at possibilities and how we are going so far .

There are more than 20 aikido dojos in Brisbane. Its quite a large number (I’ve only gotten around to maybe 1/2 of them), but then the population of greater Brisbane area is 2.0 million or so (actually its a bit more but for my maths later on I’m going to work with a round number). In my teacher, Maruyama Sensei’s philosophy of ‘Aikido without Boundaries’ I’ve kept a reasonably upto date list of them on www.aikidorepublic.com/aikido-brisbane. If by chance yours isn’t listed or has incorrect details I’m happy to update. A ‘backlink’ is nice too, though most don’t – their either not allowed, not interested or you know its still a bit feudal out there. Over the years new dojo spring up all the time and the life expectancy is pretty short for the first year or so, but then dojo tend to run for a long time after that.

So out of 2,000,000 people who might visit a dojo?

Colleague and Budo buddy at Griffith Uni Pope (Winzer, Pope et. al, 2006) have found that there is a participation rate of 2% for Australian adults and 5% of kids in the martial arts over a few years of Australian Bureau of Statistics (how long for is anyones guess though). This takes us to around 25, 000 adults across Brisbane (have omited the childrens classes for the moment). Spread across the various arts (see www.aikidorepublic.com/brisbane-martial-arts) we find a lot more martial arts schools in Brisbane. The big name arts at the moment there is mixed martial arts (MMA) for the young, fit and sweaty and the martial arts for health like Tai Chi, Chi Kung popular with the older people. The olympic sports Judo and Taekwondo benefit from the Olympic halo effect and are probably the mainstay arts for school kids (you can teach big classes and if done as solo kata practice its pretty safe too). There is the diversity of the Japanese, Chinese, Indonesian and Brazilian arts, western arts (boxing and fencing…they are olympic sport too). Yellow pages tells me there are over 300 dojo and given that only 1/2 the aikido dojo are in the yellow pages (the book is a bit antiquated after all with most now using google to find stuff) we can guess that there are actually 600 dojo in Brisbane area. So all up I reckon that leaves aikido with …. 3% (20 out of 600 dojo) of the total people doing martial arts so thats maybe 750 people doing or could be doing Aikido in Brisbane. Split this up into 20 dojo and you have 38 people each. Sure some dojo are bigger and some smaller than others, also 38 can be cut a few ways. With an anecdotal 1/2 – 1/3 of members on the mat at any time its about 10-20 on the mat. Looking at it another way on an annual cycle 38 is about 3 new people walking into the dojo a month, both of these sound about right.

So where do or could the ’38’ come from?

From surveys conducted at 2 dojos I used to operate (one 15km from city centre and one in the CBD), the figures show that around 1/2 of the students will come from the immediate surrounding area and the other from along major transport corridors. See help-i-need-aikido-students for survey results. It figures then to find your 38 (or more) people available, its important to know your catchment and be near some major transport infrastructure. Anecdotally, regional / country towns seem to do better (maybe there is less competition for peoples time?)

Once people come to a dojo how long will they stay?

Almost any dojo will tell you that over half the people that phones or email don’t turn up, half of these coming the first night never come back etc…. Tracking retention figures over a 10yr period (with a lot of people though the front door) shows that 5 new people a month will give you about 40 members in a dojo (See growing-a-dojo for the sums and retention % through the Kyu grade ranks…what can i say do much time on my hands and a brain that likes maths). Retention can be tweaked through various means e.g. beginners courses tailored classes for intermediate levels, which comes down to the focus and purpose of the dojo. However the final figures to Shodan (about 1 in 450) doesn’t seem to change with these strategies. A serious student (which Shodan represents) is something that has to come from within and keeping students longer in the Kyu ranks won’t necessarily change this. Some of highest retention seems to come from the inconvenient places or times, where despite low dojo numbers people seem to stick around, I suspect its something to do with it acting as a filter for the casual minded..

So on the whole it seems our own dojo is not doing to badly for a 60’s scout hall, wafer thin mats, though they are down permanently and somewhat compensated by a springy floor (by age rather than design). Class that start at 8pm which I thought was a serious shortcoming, being so far from ‘prime time’, but ‘touch wood’ so far it works and its not the numbers that matter but the people. Its seems to be a dojo of busy lives drawn together to practice ‘Aiki’ without the ‘bloat’ and some of them going through extraordinary sacrifices with the work/life/kids, the cross town commute for quite a few so we can spend a few hours together in practice.

Looking forward

So thats the numbers taken care of what else is there? Yamada sensei says “In my opinion, the time of spreading aikido to the world is finished; now we have to focus on quality.”  Aikido is in an interesting place at the moment, with the passing of the art to another generation, a colored reputation in the martial arts community (not all of it good), its a broard church.. . so who gets to define quality?

Reference: Leveraging the Factors Affecting Participation in the Martial Arts, Winzar, Hume Francis; Pope, Nigel Kenneth; Kim, Ki Wan; Forrest, Edward, 2006, AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND MARKETING ACADEMY