Martial Arts To Resume: Saturday 25th July
For those within the martial arts industry who did the responsible thing and sat tight following June’s crushing extension to the continued closure of indoor sport and gyms, we finally appear to have our date!
What’s Happened?
ENGLAND
On 9th July at 17:12 Oliver Dowden, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport reported that gyms and leisure centres in England can resume indoor training from Saturday 25th July. All the initial guidance and indications appear to fully support martial arts being included within this category.
This finally lifts the prohibition of indoor sport and recreation, and green-lights martial arts clubs and classes to return to their indoor training at all permitted venues. This will now not only include venues like village halls and social clubs, but also now gyms and leisure centres.
SCOTLAND
Scotland also moves to start relaxing lockdown measures as the risk assessment from Covid lowers further. In Scotland there is still no set date for the opening of indoor gyms, but increased groups being able to meet, socially distanced, gives hope to the resuming of martial arts clubs in Scotland as soon as possible – likely before the new school term.
WALES & NORTHERN IRELAND
Changes in Wales and Northern Ireland continue to evolve but are following separate timelines, and are not necessarily following England’s resumption date. We will continue to monitor closely, and update our members accordingly.
What Next?
We finally have our resume date – 25th July. This is clearly excellent news and whilst it’s cause to celebrate today, there lies alot of work ahead of us tomorrow. Clubs across the UK now need to move to ensure they can teach socially distanced classes safely and professionally. We know from Oliver Dowden’s press release this evening that this will include enhanced cleaning, pre-booking, limited capacity, reduced classes and other stringent control measures. Whether you agree with this or not, we all have a moral and professional obligation to follow the guidance closely to ensure the right to return is not taken from us again.
What About Contact Training & Grappling?
For the time being social distancing would appear to be essential. There is some talk of ‘bubbles’ being used by children of certain ages in after school clubs and holiday camps, but without a nuanced and carefully assessed guidance, it’s safe to assume the standard social distancing rules must be maintained.
What About Equipment Use?
The use of equipment should be strictly limited. Any equipment used must be kept exclusively to the same student throughout the session and carefully cleaned after use. In theory, pads and other kicking shields might be permitted but this will vary hugely from club to club, and the guidance is still (at the time of writing) less than 15 minutes old, so we’ll need to review and reflect the specific guidance as it emerges.
How Can I Resume Classes Safely?
Specific guidance will be provided by the DCMS over the coming weeks. We know this will almost certainly not cover martial arts specifically, but it will cover both gyms and sports classes and we can use this (as an industry) to guide our martial arts classes appropriately.
In the interim, it’s never been more important to ensure your club is Covid-Aware. As an association, we provide completely free Covid-Aware instructor qualifications and a whole suite of completely free Covid-Tools to help our clubs resume safely.
We’re already aware of numerous pieces of guidance from Government relating to the re-opening of indoor sport and recreation spaces that will need to be properly considered by martial arts clubs. This is especially the case if you run your own venue or facility. We’re working through this guidance now to understand how it impacts our industry and your classes, and to understand what is legislation and what is guidance. We will continue to report on this over the coming days.
What Help Can BMABA Provide Your Club In Being Covid-Ready?
Covid-Aware Martial Arts Instructor Qualification
Access an exclusive and martial-arts specific Coronavirus Aware Martial Arts Instructor Qualification with a beautiful certificate inclusive to help you mitigate and minimise risk to your club whilst planning for a safe, controlled re-opening.
Learn MoreCovid-Aware Marketing Material
Exclusive, professional designed martial arts marketing posters to help you attract new members whilst being mindful to Covid-19. Customisable for your club online.
Learn MoreSocial Distancing Assistance
Access help and support running a socially distanced martial arts session. From practical provisions like distanced posters and marketing material through to floor plans and startegic support - it's all inclusive.
Learn MoreCovid-19 Martial Arts Risk Assessments
Template risk assessments and guidance documents available to download and use to help you run online and remote training as well as outdoor classes and in-door socially distanced lessons, when permitted.
Learn MoreHelp Running Online & Outdoor Sessions
From tutorials to help you work with Zoom and YouTube to free insurance extensions and safeguarding guidance to assist you in delivering outdoor lessons to small groups and both live / pre-recorded content over the internet, our online delivery centre is ready to go.
Learn MoreNational Advertising Campaign
We're investing tens of thousands of pounds to advertise martial arts nationally to help more people get into training, and to find our approved BMABA member clubs. This includes national advertising campaigns across web, media and social media as well as exclusive martial arts directories too.
Learn MoreLiaison Support With Councils, Schools & Venues
We know local authorities, schools and venue holders might be nervous about permitting outdoor lessons in parks or allowing socially responsible in-door training when permitted. Our liaison team can help you put together a credible proposal and we will work directly with your authority, school or venue to answer queries and put their minds at ease.
Learn MoreESCP Policy Creation
We have created the industry's first ESCP policy - a document that helps you communicate with parents and students how you plan to allow safe training in your club. We'll help you create and refine this policy to offer you a great line of protection and a superb rootmap out of lockdown.
Learn MoreSyllabus & Grading Assistance
We have created detailed and open-minded policy and regulation to enable adaptations to your content, syllabus and grading schedules to ensure students remain engaged and rewarded, whilst relieving the pressure on you to try and run adapted or minimised gradings.
Learn MoreInsurance & Safeguarding Guidance
Our policy experts have adapted and made conditions available on our insurances that will help you keep running a successful and growing martial arts club without sacrifising safeguarding or insurance requirements.
Learn MoreLatest Guidance & Support
We monitor the DCMS and Government closely, and work with the Sport & Recreation Alliance to adapt national guidelines for our clubs to help our members stay ahead of the curve and up to date with the latest available options for covid-safe martial arts classes. We are also on hand for free, unlimited, confidential and impartial guidance.
Learn MoreThousands Of Pounds Of Subsidies
We've heavily discounted all of our insurance, membership, licensing and training to the absolute bare-minimums to make this as open and accessible as possible to as many clubs as we can. We are also providing tens of thousands of pounds of free resources to our member clubs to help them through Covid-19.
Learn MoreFree Covid-Aware Martial Arts Instructor Qualification
We provide completely free access to our Covid-Aware martial arts instructor qualification to all of our instructors. The course helps you understand and mitigate the risk of Coronavirus in your club as well as covering how to plan for a safe re-opening.
Free Covid-Aware Martial Arts Marketing Material
Access a range of posters, flyers and online-media that is all professionally designed and customisable. All of the marketing material provided is Covid-Aware and helps you show a socially responsible, safer place to return to martial arts.
Guidance Socially Distancing In Club
We have designed a number of floor plans and guides to help you manage the flow of footfall in your club, as well as guidance notes and assistance in controlling crowds and managing student numbers to help you comply with government social distancing measures.
Covid-19 Martial Arts Risk Assessments
We have pre-designed a selection of professional examples and editable risk assessments. This includes assessing the risk of teaching online (both live and remotely) as well as teaching outdoors and indoors, when guidance permits.
Assistance Running Outdoor Lessons
We provide our members with everything needed to provide a safe, responsible class outdoors. From Government Guidance to logistical support all the way to help arranging licenses with local authorities, we will help you make the most of the available teaching opportunities.
Access National Advertising
We know how important it is – more so than ever – that you find and attract new members. That’s why we’re investing tens of thousands of pounds for a range of national campaigns to help get more people into martial arts, both now (during the easing lockdown in line with guidance) and post-Covid. This will include social media, traditional media and viral media marketing in addition to advertising directories and other exposure opportunities online and in print. Our members can tap into this huge advertising ‘engine’ at no extra cost to promote their club.
Liaison Support With Councils, Schools & Venues
We understand the difficulty you will face delivering outdoor sessions or re-opening physical venues. That’s why we have a dedicated liaison service in place to help act as a bridge between you and councils, schools and venues. We can furnish them with documents and confirmation of insurances, policies, procedure and so on, as well as acting as a consultant to you and your club to help you get access to the spaces you need as fast as possible.
ESCP Martial Arts Policy
ESCP Policy Creation We have created the industry’s first ESCP policy – a document that helps you communicWe have created the industry’s first ESCP policy – a document that helps you communicate with parents and students how you plan to allow safe training in your club. We’ll help you create and refine this policy to offer you a great line of protection and a superb rootmap out of lockdown.ate with parents and students how you plan to allow safe training in your club. We’ll help you create and refine this policy to offer you a great line of protection and a superb rootmap out of lockdown.
Grading & Syllabus Guidance & Help
We have created detailed and open-minded policy and regulatory framework that will enable adaptations to your content, syllabus and grading schedules to ensure students remain engaged and rewarded, whilst relieving the pressure on you to try and run adapted or minimised gradings. This ensures your work and your students’ grades remain nationally ratified whilst allowing you as a club the largest amount of possible space to deviate from the ‘norm’ to help you through these challenging times.
Insurance & Safeguarding Guidance
Making sure you still have the correct insurance provisions and – above all else – ensuring safeguarding obligations are not detrimentally impacted – remains critical. We automatically upgrade and pay for any additions to insurance to ensure our members whom use us for insurance can teach online (pre-recorded and live) and outdoors, as well as in-club (where permitted) and be sure insurance is still effective. Our safeguarding guidance will assist clubs in understanding obligations and adapting their policies too.
Latest Government Guidance & Specialist Support Implementing Changes
We monitor the DCMS and Government closely, and work with the Sport & Recreation Alliance to adapt national guidelines for our clubs to help our members stay ahead of the curve and up to date with the latest available options for covid-safe martial arts classes. We are also on hand for free, unlimited, confidential and impartial guidance. We’re not a ‘tin-pot one man band’. We have an office and dedicated staff, so our resources for assisting is much greater than most organisations.
Thousands Of Pounds Of Subsidies To Support Clubs With Insurance, Licensing & Qualifications
We’ve heavily discounted all of our insurance, membership, licensing and training to the absolute bare-minimums to make this as open and accessible as possible to as many clubs as we can. We are also providing tens of thousands of pounds of free resources to our member clubs to help them through Covid-19.
Access All Of This Support, For Free
We provide access to all of our Coronavirus support and recovery toolkit for free for every BMABA member. We will stop at nothing to help the UK martial arts industry recover, and to ensure as many people as possible continue to enjoy grass roots martial arts. We will keep building on our Covid-19 recovery toolkit, but it will all remain available freely to our members.
[hello-followers title=”Footer Followers” hide_title=”1″ new_window=”1″ total_type=”button_single” columns=”6″ template=”modern” animation=”pulse-grow” nospace=”1″ cover_style=”light” cover_image_style=”round”]
