[Seerseraxlils]

I applied for unis which have Kendo in their town, I have a job to pay for shinai, fees and petrol, I won't accept a boyfriend who doesn't accept that I need time for Kendo and Iaido, ...

==> The only thing that might stop me is an illness or something, but Ignatz is my idol in that regard!

I will hopefully do Kendo and Iaido till I drop dead (or something like that).

[Abnorttrano]

- Money. Going to tournaments, seminars, and other events gets expensive.

I think this could very definitely become an issue for me eventually. I am a college student and I tend to be very competitive. I play chess (hence the screen name) in tournaments and I spend a lot of money traveling and paying for the tournaments (entry fees can come out to over $400 not to mention hotel and such). The reason I can keep playing chess is the fact that if you are good then you win money. Kendo, for starters I am not that good, does not have any prize fund that I know of. Tournaments are usually a pride thing and sometimes a trophy event. It is for the people who enjoy competing and can afford to compete. Perhaps that is an issue the politics of kendo should look into. Making prize funds for tournaments.

Just a thought.

[xanaxnewtrader]

Perhaps that is an issue the politics of kendo should look into. Making prize funds for tournaments.

If that ever happens, that might be a reason for me to quit.

[arraxylap]

If that ever happens, that might be a reason for me to quit.

agreed. there is only one tournament that i know of on which besides the trophy you get a check/money (not a lot, but still money). the times we have placed in this tournament none of us wanted to keep the money for personal purposes and we gave it to the treasurer to make it dojo general fund instead...

[anderriter]

It´shard for me to imagine leaving kendo... but I think I have a lot to know in this matter yet, so who knows what may happen tomorrow, by now I can only imagine leaving it for health reasons, but I know of one sensei that left a dojo because people there didn´t like him and so it was really awkward to go there and teach.

[Old-old-Ivy]

I'll quit when I'm perfect at it or dead. I also know which of these two events will happen first...............

[Blacksheepaalredy]

This thread so far has, quite rightly, centered on individuals' own motives.

When I was BKA Treasurer, I had access to membership records and as I had to sort them out, I did some analysis. When I managed to collate about 10 years worth of data that was reliable, I looked at the attrition rate within the BKA. This covers the arts of kendo, iaido and jodo.

Basically it came down to this: If 100 new members joined in any one year, next year only 50 would renew. The year after that, only 25 would renew. After another six years, there would be 12 of the original 100. This means that after eight years, the retention rate was 12%. I thought this very low, until I realised that other mainstream sports had roughly similar retention rates.

After 8 years, then, the BKA basically has you for life. Of course a few leave afterwards , but generally because of a life-changing circumstance, such as death, emigration, or illness. It's very rare for a 6th dan to just quit for no apparent reason, but beginners leave in droves. This may be totally obvious, but perhaps it takes a lot to quit after investing 20 years of blood, tears, toil and sweat (apologies to Mr. Churchill).

The rate of attrition slows down markedly after 2 years, largely, I think, that by this time most of the wannabes, time wasters and those who realise that kendo/iaido/jodo is not for them have been weeded out.

I've seen very little evidence of "shodanitis" in the JSA. It does happen, of course, but shodan is the rank that says you have found your way to the dojo and one really starts to learn.

Organisations, especially established ones, tend not to have much trouble recruiting members. The trick is to keep them, and the biggest influence I've seen there has been the teachers. Some have a knack of keeping people, and others seem to be very talented at driving new people away.

[VogsHoock]

+rep for a really interesting post Gavin

[luffyplayaz]

Gavin, I'm curious - do you require member dojos to sign up new recruits to BKA immediately? Because those retention rates look very high to me. I'd say the retention rate is about 10% over the first year in our dojo. However if you discounted those who quit within the first month or two, the numbers might look more like yours.

[tobaccoman]

I was thinking the same thing... 12% after 8 years is fantastic. I'd love to have that kind of retention rate. Looking at my records at Grand Rapids Kendo Kai, I'd have a dojo with 96 students in 2011. I need to get to work in order to attain that. My real retention rate has been more like 6% and I still look at that as good. The Battle Creek Dojo is somewhere around 3% and that's after a string of recent good luck.

Thanks for compiling those stats. Very interesting.

[michael247]

The BKA does require that people practicing in dojo be insured, which means immediate sign-up. We do have temporary memberships for this purpose, which can be upgraded to full membership after 3 months.

We also require that there is unbroken memberships for the waiting time between grades, which undoubtably helps with retention rates.

The figures that I gave are for the whole association, and covered membership, so not everyone will be practicing all the time.

At my dojo I know we have many more on the books than actually come to practice, and I think many other dojo are the same in this.

[Xfxhbcxp]

Sigh! So, we're in pretty much the same shape as many other dojos as far as retention goes. Just another trial to overcome on the long road of kendo I guess. I can't quit while "the one" is still out there waiting to find us.