So you want to find careers in the martial arts industry. First of all, good luck. It’s not always easy. There are plenty of jobs out there, sure, but it’s not quite as simple as, say, applying for a job at a fast food restaurant. Honestly, there are only so many positions open.

However, if you keep at it, and if you have the skills and the ambition to do it, it’s not impossible. Just remember the one key rule of finding work in the industry: The way you treat others is the most important thing. This is really a personality based industry, and martial artists tend to refer to themselves as a member of a much larger family of martial artists. It’s not so much “who you know” as it is “how close you are to them.”

Sensei

There are a lot of instructing jobs out there. You can either run your own dojo, or you can become an assistant instructor. Alternately, you might be able to find work running the karate class at the local community centers. If you want to run your own dojo, you need to be careful. Many senseis, despite their excellent knowledge and expertise, go under almost immediately because they simply don’t know anything about marketing themselves. When your whole life is the art of fighting, it’s hard to learn business.

As an assistant, you usually earn an hourly wage. It’s reliable work, and if you treat your sensei with the proper respect, you may even inherit their position should they retire or expand to another location.

It’s hard to say exactly how much you’ll make as an instructor, but most do it for the passion, the love of teaching, while drawing their living expenses from investments and so on. Not to say that you can’t make a living as a sensei, just that you do need to study the art of marketing as well as the art of fighting.

Stunt Work

Stunt work isn’t quite as big an industry as it once was. As action movies have become more ambitious, they actually have been phasing out traditional stuntwork in favor of CGI and actors doing their own fight scenes. However, television still has a lot of room for stunt work. You may also find work performing for motion capture for video games and so on.

The downside: You’ll have to live near a big entertainment city like New York, Toronto, LA, etcetera. The good news: It’s easy to find the work and get employed if you have the skills and you’re not afraid of falling off a roof and landing on your butt.

Stunt people make good money as they have one of the riskiest jobs in show business, but the next month’s check isn’t always a guarantee, as it’s mainly freelance work. Very few stuntmen work on salary.

The New Media

You’re in the age of the internet. Take a look at your average martial arts website. It’s usually… Pretty poorly designed. The people who spend their whole lives learning martial arts spend very little time learning about much else. However, if you know what to do, if you know the angles and you have some real, helpful advice to share with your viewers or with your readers, then there’s real money to made in the world of martial arts online.

This article was written for you by Dustin Fennell and MartialArtsEquipmentDirect.com. Come by and check out our top notch selection of shin guards and don’t forget to check out the ProForce Instep Protector for the super low price of $5.77. Thanks for stopping by.

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