We believe martial arts should be for everyone, no matter what their physical abilities are. We follow disability access laws in the US and other countries to make sure our programs are accessible to all. This means we do our best to make reasonable changes to help students with disabilities participate.
Testing for ranks in our programs can be tricky if you have a disability. This is because many martial-arts styles involve specific full-body movements.
If you have a physical disability and are interested in earning rank, here’s some information about how flexible our programs can be, based on what we’ve seen:
- Some Mobility Differences: If you have some differences in how you move, like if one arm or leg works differently, you can usually change some techniques in our martial arts programs. This helps you still learn and reach your goals. Our Krav Maga and Muay Thai programs are especially adaptable.
- More Significant Mobility Differences: If you have more significant differences in how you move, it might be difficult to earn rank in some of our programs because of the required movements. If this is the case for you, we encourage you to join the GMAU program you’re interested in and train without focusing on earning ranks. Or you can purchase the program's core videos for download from our Black Belt at Home site. Either way, you can adapt the training to suit your own abilities.
We want you to be able to participate and enjoy the benefits of martial arts. And so you're welcome to enroll in a GMAU program without having to do tests and earn ranks.
We hope to see you training with us soon!