What is the highest paying martial arts related job?

Answer 1

The answer for this question may surprise a lot of people and It will take some explaining to do. Rent is expensive to have your own Dojo or place of practice, not to mention paying for all of the materials needed including insurance. If you use weapons in the Dojo then it costs you extra as well. Some Dojo are full time, which they hold classes every day or the majority of the week. These instructors are full time and that's all they do is teach. Some will trade days, you may have one instructor one day and a different one the next. They can rotate. Most Dojo today will not teach one art, they will have a bundle of arts so that they can make more money and appeal to more than one group of students. Some Sensei will not get paid at all and often have to pay out of their own pocket to make rent. Other than common arts such as Karate or Tae Kwon Do, other arts such as Judo, Aikido, Kendo, Iaido and others will share a dojo with another art, creating a schedule so that it all works out. The less common arts usually cannot afford to have their own place, which is why they will find an existing dojo to teach at. You would usually be allowed to teach for free however money that is made on student membership will go to the dojo (a certain amount agreed upon).

So, just being a regular instructor or Sensei usually do not make as much money as you would think, and most have other jobs that they do other than teaching. The highest paid job would be a Peace Officer Standard Training (POST) Use of force or open hand combat instructor. They will teach at police or corrections academy.

Some may think that Military contracted instructors would get paid the most. This is incorrect. There are two options here, the military can contract out to a civilian or they will have their own hand to hand combat person which makes a standard military salary. On special occasion the military base may have a special seminar or training event and hire a couple instructors to teach special stuff which would add to their knowledge. These things are not a full time job so an instructor could not rely on this to make a living.

These are just a few common scenarios that I hope answer this question. If an Instructor or Sensei had 30 students and charged them 100 dollars a month each, he would make 3,000 dollars a month. Depending on your space, rent could cost 2,500 a month plus paying the electrical bills. This would make the instructor maybe just 200 or 300 dollars a month. So now what you do is find other instructors to teach Aikido, Judo and other arts. Those teachers would only make good money if they could have a lot of students, which most of the time is not the case.