A school owner who has been teaching for 35 years put this on Reddit under the title "Considering not offering adult classes anymore":
"in the past month I have had 33 Adults sign up for an intro class. Out of those 33, only 5 showed up."
Two of the five, in his words, "did a great job and signed up". His conclusion: "it really seems like I am wasting my time offering classes to adults."
If you run adult classes you have probably had a month like that. Kids turn up because a parent drives them. Adults book on a Sunday night, full of good intentions, and by Thursday at 6pm they're on the sofa. So the belief sets in: adults are flaky, and the adult programme isn't worth the mat time.
Look at what his own numbers say, though. The two who walked in and joined didn't need convincing on the mat. His problem was the 28 who never came through the door. Nothing he did on the mat could reach them. They were lost somewhere between the booking and the class, and that stretch you can change this week.
They weren't lazy. They were dreading it.
Read the replies to that post, and the threads where adult beginners talk about their first class, and the same thing comes up again and again. The adult who booked didn't forget. They had the class hanging over them all day.
One reply to the 33-to-5 owner put it plainly:
"most of them are more than likely already intimidated cause they're trying something new that can be quite risky/dangerous in their own mind"
An adult who started at 36:
"starting martial arts as an adult feels ridiculous. I started at around 36, and I had to get over the hurdle of feeling silly."
A woman explaining why women quit:
"it's VERY intimidating to be the only woman in a gym full of men"
And one adult who did make it through the door, describing their first intro class:
"Walking into a gym with zero BJJ experience and seeing a room full of trained killers can definitely be intimatidating. I know I was."
That same person said they committed to a long membership partly as a way "to block out that voice inside that brings up excuses not to go". That voice is your no-show. It starts talking the moment the booking confirmation lands, and it gets louder as the day goes on. By 5pm it's winning.
A child doesn't have that voice, or has a parent who overrides it. An adult on their own has nobody. Unless you're the one talking to them.
The four questions every booked adult is asking
Pull those threads together and the fears come down to four questions. None of them is "when is the class?" Your reminders already answer that.
- Am I going to get hurt? Will I be put in with people who know what they're doing, will I have to spar, will someone crank a lock on me.
- Am I going to look stupid? Everyone else will know the moves. I haven't run since school. I'll be the one who can't do a forward roll.
- Will I be the only one? The only woman, the only person over 40, the only one who's never done this.
- What do I even wear? It sounds trivial. It isn't. The same woman said getting kit that fitted "felt a lot like trying on swimsuits: oddly humiliating and fairly uncomfortable."
Here's the detail that stuck with us. In his original post, before a single person had replied, the 35-year owner wrote: "before anyone asks, we have never had any injuries caused during sparring in the 35 years we have been in business". He knew the injury question was coming. He answered it for a room full of martial artists on Reddit.
Later in the thread he explained how his intro week works: "The sparring is part of an intro week and is usually the second class. They don't free spar, they work sparring drills with one of the assistant instructors." To him, that's gentle. Drills, one to one, with an instructor. To somebody who hasn't thrown a punch since the playground, the word "sparring" in week one is the whole fear in one word.
We don't know what his 28 were told before they were due in. That's the point. Most owners don't know either, because the answer to the fear sits in the owner's head and never makes it into a text.
A reminder is not reassurance
Most schools already send a confirmation and a reminder, maybe two. They say the day, the time and the address. That's logistics. It answers "when" and "where", and the adult sitting at their desk at 3pm isn't worried about either.
Neil makes the same point in his book Martial Arts Students On Tap. He writes that booked adults "are more likely to change their mind and not show up for class, so they need more nurturing and encouragement to show", and that because "some people (especially adults) will be nervous about going to a martial arts class", you should "explain how easy it is for beginners to try a class and how safe it will be". He's just as clear that an automated reminder doesn't do that job. It takes "human conversations (not just AI or automations)".
So don't add another reminder. Add three short texts from a person, each one answering a question the adult is too embarrassed to ask.
The three texts
Send them from the same number your booking confirmation came from. A new number reads as spam. Keep each one short enough to read on a lock screen, and have a named person send them, not a sequence. If you want the mechanics of replying fast, we've covered those separately.
Text 1. Within 15 minutes of the booking
Text 2. The evening before, around 7pm
Text 3. On the day, about 2 to 3 hours before class
Only send lines that are true at your school. If beginners do spar in week one, don't say they don't. Say what actually happens ("you'll do light partner drills with a coach, nobody goes hard on you"). If you have women training in that class, say so ("[name] coaches Thursdays" or "there are plenty of women in this class"), because for a woman booking on her own that one line answers the question she won't ask.
Why these three and in that order:
Text 1 starts a conversation, not a countdown. It ends in a question, and the answer tells you which fear you're dealing with. "Never done anything" means text 2 matters most. "Did judo twenty years ago" means they're worried about being rusty, not being hurt.
Text 2 is the one that does the work. It goes out the night before, not three days before, so the answers are fresh when the doubts are. Every line answers one of the four questions. The watch-first line gives a nervous person a way out that isn't disappearing. Somebody who watches on Tuesday and trains on Thursday is a show. Somebody who feels trapped into Tuesday is a no-show you'll never hear from again.
Text 3 lands when the voice is loudest. Two or three hours out is when the sofa starts making its case. A short message from a named person who is expecting them, with the parking sorted, makes not coming feel like letting somebody down. That's the feeling you want.
When they reply, reply back. If they ask whether they'll be the oldest, tell them the truth about who's in the class. The conversation is the reassurance. The template only opens it.
Before you give up on adults
The owner with 33 bookings was ready to stop offering adult classes. Two adults joined off five who walked in. The leak was the 28 who never arrived, and nothing in how he taught the class could reach them, because they never saw it.
That's worth knowing before you drop the programme, or before you decide the answer is more adult advertising. Whichever way an adult reaches your booking page, the gap between booking and the door is the same. They need somebody to answer the four questions.
But the adult who books on their own is the hardest one to get. There's an easier one.
The cheapest adult student is already in your lobby
Neil's view, and it's why most of the ads we run are for kids' classes: "We mainly focus on kids because they are brought in the door by adults. The show rate is almost always higher. And when the adult comes in the door you can make an offer to them too."
Look at who's standing by the mat during a kids' trial. An adult who has already driven there, walked in and watched a full class. The four questions are answered before you say a word. They've seen nobody gets hurt, they've seen beginners fumble, and they've seen what people wear.
In his video on growing an adult programme from a kids' one, Neil's advice is to "offer the parents something when the child is enrolling because often you'll find that parents will try out classes when the child is starting in the school anyway" (0:00). It pays twice, because it "helps with the retention of the child because the parents will be bringing the child in when they're going for classes" (0:20).
And it works in the other direction too: the parent offer helps you enrol the child in the first place. A parent deciding whether to sign up one child is weighing a cost. A parent deciding whether the family starts something together is weighing something they want. In his book Neil puts it plainly: "it helps to enroll and retain the child (if the parent starts classes and it becomes a family thing to do, they are much more likely to train for longer) and you could get one or both parents enrolled as well." So say it at the desk, in his words: martial arts "is something that parents and children can train together and it's a great way of building a strong relationship with your child."
One family, up to three memberships, and a child who's harder to pull out of class because a parent is on the mat as well.
That's the offer for the parent standing in front of you on enrolment day. The parents who enrolled a child a year ago never got it, and they're still on your bench twice a week: how to grow an adult programme out of the parents already in your lobby has the bench count and the invite for a one-off parents-only session.
Three rules from the same video:
- Make it strong. "something like two free weeks or even a free month some kind of a very strong offer" (0:20). One of our schools gives adults two free months, and "he's doing really really well with it" (1:00).
- Enrol the parent at their first class, same as the child. "you don't just give them the offer" and wait to see (0:40). In his enrolment video: "you do not wait till the end of the trial period to enroll them" (0:01).
- Stack cheap extras aimed at the parent's own goal. A nutrition plan, gear, a uniform. "often they don't cost a lot", and they land hardest when you "gear it towards what the parent is looking for so if it's weight loss or something like that" (1:41).
His book adds a deadline: give the parent a window to use the trial, "otherwise they probably won't".
At the desk, straight after the child enrols
At the end of the parent's first class
Same rule as the texts: only say what's true. If the adult class doesn't run while the kids train, give the night it does run.
Where we sit in this
We're paid when a student walks into your school, which makes a booked adult who stays on the sofa a loss for us as much as you. That's why we'd rather you sorted the evening-before text than spent more on ads.
If you'd like to talk it through, book fifteen minutes. Bring your adult timetable and what your booking confirmation says now. If what's missing is a text rather than more bookings, we'll tell you that on the call.
Do this Monday
Open your adult booking confirmation and read it as a 38-year-old who hasn't exercised since school. Count how many of the four questions it answers: will I get hurt, will I look stupid, will I be the only one, what do I wear. Then paste text 2 into your templates, change every line so it's true for your school, and put one person's name against sending it the night before every adult intro class this week.
Then pick your parent offer, write it on a card at the front desk, and say it at every kids' enrolment this week.
The short version
- Adult no-shows are mostly fear, not laziness. Getting hurt, looking stupid, being the only one, and what to wear.
- A reminder answers "when". The adult is worried about "what will happen to me". Only a person answering that closes the gap.
- Send three texts from the booking number: a question within 15 minutes, a what-tomorrow-looks-like message the evening before, and a see-you-soon two or three hours out.
- Offer "come and watch first". It turns a disappearance into a later show.
- Only promise what's true. If beginners spar in week one, describe it honestly rather than deny it.
- Your easiest adults come in with a child. Make the parent a strong offer when the child enrols, and try to enrol them at their first class.