Thirty Years of NAPMA
The National Association of Professional Martial Artists has been arguing the same point since 1994: that a school does not have to choose between martial arts standards and a working business, because each one pays for the other. This is what happened along the way — the magazine, the certifications, the events and the people, with the sources that document them.
The founding years
1994 – 2000 — NAPMA began as an answer to a problem nobody in the industry was solving: instructors were being told to choose between martial arts standards and a viable business. The association was built on the position that the two reinforce each other.
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1994
NAPMA is founded
The National Association of Professional Martial Artists is established by John Graden, a Florida school owner, to give martial arts school operators a professional body of their own. The NAPMA name enters commercial use on 7 August 1994.
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1996
Martial Arts Professional launches
The association starts a trade magazine for its members. Volume 1, Number 1 is the Winter 1996 issue; by July 1996 it is publishing monthly. It runs for roughly fifteen years and becomes the industry’s paper of record for how schools were actually operated.
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1996
Cardio Karate
Jim Graden launches Cardio Karate, putting martial arts schools into the group-fitness market years before that became ordinary. The NAPMA Fitness Kickboxing Certification and, later, the Ultimate Bodyshaping Course follow from it.
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1996
The American Council on Martial Arts
ACMA is founded to certify instructors against a written standard — background, curriculum, safety and business practice — rather than rank alone.
Scale and handover
2001 – 2006 — By the early 2000s the association was serving well over a thousand schools a month and the magazine had passed its tenth year. In 2004 it changed hands.
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2001
Little Ninjas
The Little Ninjas preschool curriculum enters commercial use, and becomes one of the most widely licensed programs the association ever produced. By this point NAPMA is supplying resources to roughly 1,800 subscribing schools.
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2004
The association changes hands
John Graden sells NAPMA and Martial Arts Professional after ten years, with membership above 2,000 schools worldwide.
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2005
Ten years in print
The January 2005 issue — Volume 10, Number 1 — is published as the magazine’s tenth anniversary issue.
The Oliver era
2007 – 2013 — A working school owner bought the association, and the events, the coaching programs and the video archive that members still reference date from this period.
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2007
Stephen Oliver acquires NAPMA
Martial Arts Marketing, Incorporated acquires the association in August 2007; the trademark assignment is recorded on 22 August. For the first time the association is run by someone operating a school chain of his own — Mile High Karate — while running it.
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2007
The Masters Series is filmed
NAPMA records 26 films with nine instructors — among them Fumio Demura, Jeff Smith, Ernie Reyes Sr., Cung Le, Dan Severn and Frank Shamrock. Shot for members on DVD, the set is now online in full.
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2008
The first Extreme Success Academy
The association’s flagship annual event is held for the first time. It runs alongside the Quantum Leap marketing event, giving NAPMA two national gatherings a year.
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2009
The Lifetime Achievement Award to Pat Burleson
Grandmaster Pat Burleson receives the 2009 NAPMA Lifetime Achievement Award from Stephen Oliver at that year’s Extreme Success Academy — recognition of the man who, more than anyone, made the commercial martial arts school work as a business.
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2010
The third Academy, San Diego
The third annual Extreme Success Academy is held in San Diego, with Brian Tracy presenting to the association for the first time alongside Jeff Smith, Ed Parker Jr., Michael Parrella and Toby Milroy.
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2010
Mastering Martial Arts Business
With the May 2010 issue the magazine changes title to Mastering Martial Arts Business and moves to digital distribution.
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2011
The Financial Power Summit
Stephen Oliver takes a one-day program into five metropolitan areas with Grandmaster Y.K. Kim, built around what the most profitable schools were doing differently.
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2012
Recognition at the Hall of Honors
Stephen Oliver and NAPMA are honoured for outstanding contributions to the martial arts business at the 12th annual Action Martial Arts Magazine Hall of Honors, a year after presenting there.
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2013
The last issues
Mastering Martial Arts Business publishes its enhanced digital issues for Winter and Fall 2013. After roughly eighteen years, the magazine stops.
The archive
2014 – today — The magazine stopped publishing. What it produced did not stop being useful.
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2026
The archive is rebuilt
Every surviving article — 321 of them, by 22 named contributors — is restored, re-sectioned and published as a permanent public archive, together with the 2007 video sessions and this record.
About this record. Every entry above is drawn from a dated primary source — the association’s own published record, the pages of Martial Arts Professional, and United States trademark filings. Where a date could not be documented it has been left out rather than estimated, so this is a record of what can be shown, not everything that happened. If you were there for something missing here — an Academy, an award, a program launch — tell us and we will add it.