In September 2018, something happened that shook my view of loyalty in martial arts.
I’d left a stable career to coach at an independent martial arts gym full-time. I’d trained there from my early 20s, and even as a teenager. It was more to me than just training, it was somewhere I got my physical and mental health together, setting me on my future path. My dream was to be part of expanding the gym that had changed my life.
We were doing really well, recent championship titles and growing membership base, we were making a name for ourselves and on the cusp of opening new locations. I had been promoted to assistant manager/head coach which I was extremely proud of.
Then something shifted.
I started to get a sense of unease. By that I mean, I started to notice a staff member arriving late, inconsistent behaviours, some tension within the team that left me wondering if our team was fractured. I couldn’t see how, but I could feel it.
And then it happened. With no warning a replica of our gym, with a different name (although copied), suddenly opened down the road from us. Run by none other than a member of our own staff.
What I had been feeling, that sense of unease and tension, was betrayal as a member of our staff had been slowly working on their new facility for months, all whilst being paid and then taking paid annual leave to finish their project.
This was just the start.
The Fallout
As soon as this came out, we dismissed the staff member involved. I felt relieved. The past few months had been challenging, sensing their disloyalty which had caused them to withdraw from our team and make work harder for the rest of us, I was glad they were gone.
Almost immediately, the knock on effects had begun. The smearing of our name slowly came after as a way to poach members away. As cancellations came in this was a thinly veiled jab at the rest of our hardworking staff.
They undercut our prices, copied our free gloves trial offer, mirrored our curriculum, and even handed out flyers outside our building.
This was not an innocent “we just wanted to do our own thing.” It was a calculated move to take what someone else had spent over 30 years building and duplicate it.
The Cost of Betrayal
I know how much sacrifice goes into running a martial arts school. It’s not just about teaching classes, it’s about years of study, investing in programs and courses, learning sales and business skills, and pouring time, money, and heart into creating something special through trial and error, grit and hard work.
To see that work copied, repackaged, and used against you? That’s not entrepreneurship. That’s theft.
And yet, none of them ever explained why. No conversation. No accountability. Just… silence. And perhaps that’s because the answer is simple: selfishness.
They saw what someone else had built and decided they wanted a piece of it.
The Bigger Picture
Since then, I’ve noticed this isn’t unique to martial arts; it happens in all industries. People don’t want to put in the years to develop something unique; they’d rather replicate someone else’s blueprint and try to shortcut their way to success.
Since then this ‘copy’ gym has experienced the same thing happen to them. What goes around comes around. Like a Russian doll the more something is copied the smaller and diluted it becomes of the original.
But it still left me wondering: what happened to loyalty?
Martial arts was meant to be about respect and honour. We bow to our instructors. We talk about discipline, humility, and perseverance. But when it came down to it, many of the people who once talked about those values were happy to abandon them when it suited their own interests.
I’m all for cross-training and learning from different people, but I always had a home. My home was my gym in Bedford. I could train anywhere in the world, but I knew where I belonged.
Loyalty doesn’t mean blind allegiance. It means respect, honesty, and not stabbing someone in the back to get ahead. In martial arts, as in life, the real champions aren’t just the ones with medals, they’re the ones who keep their integrity intact.