Thirty Years of NAPMA
The National Association of Professional Martial Artists has been arguing the same point since 1993: 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 the record so far — the magazine, the certifications, the events and the people, with the sources that document them. The association is still here, and the magazine now publishes online at MartialArtsProfessional.com.
The founding years
1993 – 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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1993
NAPMA is founded
The National Association of Professional Martial Artists is founded by John Graden, a Florida school owner, to give martial arts school operators a professional body of their own. The NAPMA name enters registered commercial use in 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.
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1999
The Lifetime Achievement Award begins
NAPMA and Martial Arts Professional establish the Lifetime Achievement Award, presented for extraordinary lifetime contribution, influence and leadership in the martial arts profession. Joe Lewis is its first recipient. Grand Master Jhoon Rhee, the father of American Taekwondo, is honored on June 10, 1999.
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2000
Fumio Demura is honored
Sensei Fumio Demura — master of Shito-Ryu karate and Okinawan kobudo, and one of the most influential ambassadors for traditional Japanese martial arts in the United States — receives the Lifetime Achievement Award.
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 both passed to Century Martial Arts.
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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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2002
NAPMA Squared
Stephen Oliver launches NAPMA Squared, also known as Maximum Impact — the first high-level direct-response marketing, advanced sales process and professional teaching program built specifically for advanced and professional schools.
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2003
Three Lifetime Achievement Awards
The Lifetime Achievement Award goes to Ernie Reyes, Sr., founder of West Coast World Martial Arts, on June 22, 2003; to Tony Robbins, the peak-performance authority who earned his black belt under Grand Master Jhoon Rhee; and to Stephen Oliver.
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2004
Century Martial Arts acquires NAPMA
Century Martial Arts acquires NAPMA and Martial Arts Professional from founder John Graden after ten years, with membership above 2,000 schools worldwide.
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2005
The Century judgment is affirmed
Century Martial Art Supply had sued NAPMA and International IKON over product-comparison charts carried in the association’s monthly mailings. A jury found for Century on defamation, tortious interference, deceptive trade practices and unfair competition, and on 19 April 2005 the Tenth Circuit affirmed that judgment. The case was brought under the association’s earlier ownership and had already been tried when Century acquired NAPMA.
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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 to Present — A working school owner bought the association. The events, the coaching programs and the video archive that members still reference date from this period, and both titles moved to digital publication at MartialArtsProfessional.com, where they continue today alongside eighteen years of back issues.
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2007
Stephen Oliver acquires NAPMA
Martial Arts Marketing, Incorporated acquires the association from Century Martial Arts 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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2007
Rob Colasanti, president
Rob Colasanti serves as president of the association; the November 2007 Innovations film records him in the role. No source establishes when his tenure began. He later appears in the archive under his own byline.
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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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2008
The Lifetime Achievement Award to Grand Master Jeff Smith
At the Extreme Success Academy, NAPMA presents the Lifetime Achievement Award to Grand Master Jeff Smith — the first PKA World Light Heavyweight Champion and NAPMA’s Chief of Instruction.
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2009
The Lifetime Achievement Award to J Pat Burleson
Grand Master J 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 the Martial Arts Business
With the May 2010 issue the magazine changes title to Mastering the Martial Arts Business and moves to digital distribution.
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2010
The Lifetime Achievement Award to Brian Tracy
At the San Diego Extreme Success Academy, NAPMA presents the Lifetime Achievement Award to Brian Tracy — a black belt and former martial arts school operator who became one of the world’s best-known authorities on sales, achievement and leadership.
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2011
The Financial Power Summit
Stephen Oliver takes a one-day program into five metropolitan areas with Grand Master 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
Both titles go digital
Martial Arts Professional Magazine and Mastering the Martial Arts Business shift to digital publication through MartialArtsProfessional.com, where the enhanced digital issues for Winter and Fall 2013 are released.
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2026
The full archive goes online
All 292 articles, by 22 named contributors, are re-sectioned and published in full at MartialArtsProfessional.com, alongside a searchable library of more than 2,500 videos, the Masters Series sessions and this record. Everything the association has published is now readable in one place — and the publishing continues.
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 has happened. It is a living page: if you were there for something missing here — an Academy, an award, a program launch — tell us and we will add it.