the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

Hey Maarten,

I live in the Midwest and have a small training group that meets once a week. Because the weather from November - March is so unpredictable (rain - ice - snow - ice - rain) we usually train indoors then and save the outdoor training for April - September. Even then, sometimes it gets so hot during the summer that we end up indoors again.

If you train in a park, be prepared to have police stop and check things out if you are sparring with weapons (especially if you have a large group). I've never had issues once I've explained that we are "just friends doing some martial arts training." It helps if you use plastic rather than aluminum trainers.

As for the legal stuff (waivers, insurance, setting up an LLC so you can't get sued personally) you might want to consider talking to someone in the US who teaches martial arts for a living.

Good luck and keep us posted!

Greg

Thanks, mate. That's sound advice. I don't plan to do weapon stuff, but definitely sparring.. Hope the police don't give me a hard time..

Rules, regulations, and laws governing whether you are allowed to teach in a public park are largely going to be local -- it depends on the town or city where you'll be teaching. I suspect often it's a bit of a gray area. Every town is going to have SOME sort of vaguely worded rules or laws that regulate or somewhat prohibit commercial and group activities in public parks, more or less.

From a practical standpoint, whether you can GET AWAY with teaching in a public park depends on any number of things. For example:

How much of the park are you going to be using? If you pick a relatively small park, and you're teaching a reasonably large group of students (so, 20 or more), that's more likely to get noticed, both by jerks who enjoy filing complaints (some people don't have much of a life), and by police officers passing by on patrol. Conversely, if you're giving private, semi-private, or small-group lessons (say, 10 or fewer students at a time), and especially if you're giving them in a very large park, you might not get noticed or hassled at all.

Are you teaching in a large city or a small town? Small-town cops are BORED. Really, really bored. If you're violating some obscure ordinance, they don't care any more than a big-city cop, but writing you up can break up the monotony of their day, and they tend to be desperate for anything that can do that. An officer New York or Chicago frankly doesn't give a shit because he has bigger and better (or worse, depending on your perspective) things to worry about.

Personally, I have both taught (wing chun) and taken (baguazhang) lessons in various NYC public parks for quite a few years now (not consistently) and it's never been a problem. I've had a few friendly passersby asking "What is it that you're doing?" and once I had an old Chinese dude who had been training nearby (this was in Chinatown) interrupt to tell me he saw my teacher training in the park all the time and that I was lucky to be learning under him. Everyone else has largely left us alone.

Your intention to include sparring might present a little bit of a problem. Officials are going to worry about liability issues if you do anything that looks to them to resemble a kickboxing, wrestling, or MMA match. (You could probably get away with some types of push hands, though.)

If your local park requires a permit that's free or fairly inexpensive to obtain, I'd recommend getting one. I'd further recommend that rather than say you're teaching "martial arts," tell the clerk you'll be teaching "Tai Chi." Because your average American bureaucrat will hear that and picture you teaching little old ladies how to move in slow motion, and nothing could possibly go wrong with granting your application for something like that, right?

Good luck!

MaartenSFS,

You might contact (e.g., website, phone) the Parks and Recreation center at the city you went to teach at. They provide the classroom and take a percentage. Other places, YMCA, church gyms, etc.

Shit, now I'm wondering if I should go back to the YMCA.. I do sparring at the end of every class. The last thing I need is problems with the police.. Thanks for the advice, gents. I didn't think this through enough. Just assumed it'd be the same everywhere..

Hey Maarten,

I know you're just trying to get a sense of how things work out here so you have some ideas for how to proceed after your move, but don't worry about having everything figured out in advance. Enjoy the rest of your time in China with your Sifu. Once you land stateside you'll get a feel for how to proceed.

Best,
Greg

MaartenSFS,

Off topic, no offense. You have a cool name. I think the pronunciation of your name is similar to the pronunciation (in da hood) of Martin in a past popular TV series in the US.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF4H5vZ-Km4

Published on Oct 24, 2010
Martin Laurence- Dragon Fly Jones ski:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dfgyBM5-ho

You will most likely not be able to train weapons in a public park.

On a practical note, the biggest problem is always getting from the "having enough people to justify teaching at all" to the "having enough people to justify renting a space" level.

Depending upon the size of your house you can always teach small classes in your back yard if you have one.

People occasionally ask me to set up classes in NYC, but the reality of renting a place means I'd have to have at least 10 people paying $100/mo each just to cover renting a place indoors for a 3 hour weekly class. And at that rate I wouldn't actually make any money (Room rental = $60/hr times 3 hours times four weeks per month = $720/month before taxes, supplies, equipment, etc.).