Martial Arts Gym KPI Dashboard: Attendance, Testing, Churn

The martial arts gym KPIs worth tracking fit on one screen: the Five-Mat Dashboard. Watch visits per member per month, 90-day survival of new starts, test-eligibility conversion, monthly churn, and coach cost per class hour. Each has a red-flag threshold, an owner, and a review day, so problems surface weeks before a cancellation email arrives.

TL;DR

• Every Monday, pull members with fewer than four check-ins in the last 28 days who had eight or more in the 28 days before. Have their usual coach text them by Wednesday.
• Count freezes past 60 days and card declines not recovered within 14 days as churn, then divide by members active on the first of the month.
• Run your belt-testing eligibility report 21 days before each testing date so no eligible student waits more than four weeks for an invite.

What are the five martial arts gym KPIs on the dashboard?

Visits per member, 90-day survival, test-eligibility conversion, churn, and coach cost per class hour. Everything else is a drill-down beneath one of these five.

Three of the five are leading indicators: attendance, survival, and eligibility. They move weeks before money does. The other two, churn and coach cost, are lagging checks that confirm whether the leading numbers told the truth.

Monthly revenue and total member count are missing on purpose. When recurring revenue dips, the members behind the dip have usually stopped training weeks earlier. Revenue tells you something already happened. Attendance tells you what is about to happen.

The front desk should be able to pull all three leading numbers in under ten minutes on a Monday morning. If it takes longer, the dashboard gets skipped during a busy week, and that is the week you need it most. For the rest of the operating stack, from scheduling to waivers, the martial arts studio operations hub collects the related playbooks.

Why is visits per member the first number to check?

Attendance falls before billing does. A member who drops below four visits a month is often halfway out the door, usually weeks before canceling.

Published research supports this. A 2021 retrospective study of 3,802 members at two Brazilian gyms followed turnstile data for 12 months. Members training three or fewer times a month had dropout of 98.7% to 99.6% across the two gyms. Members training seven or more times a month dropped out at 51.3% to 67.3%. Those were general fitness gyms, not dojos, but the direction carries over to class-based training: low frequency predicts leaving.

Run the Four-Visit Rule every Monday:

1. Pull every active member with fewer than four check-ins in the trailing 28 days.
2. Keep only those who had eight or more in the 28 days before that. A sharp drop matters more than a low count.
3. Remove anyone on an approved freeze or injury hold, or the list fills with people you have already spoken to.
4. Give each name to the coach who teaches that member's usual class. The coach texts by Wednesday and mentions something specific, like the clinch drill from last Thursday.

How should you calculate churn so it does not lie to you?

Divide cancellations by members active on the first of the month, count freezes separately, and never let new sign-ups hide the leavers.

The most common mistake is dividing by the end-of-month count. A strong intake month inflates the denominator and makes churn look smaller than it is. Report starts and cancellations as two raw counts side by side, then calculate churn against the opening number only.

Two hidden leaks need adding back. A freeze that has run past 60 days is usually a cancellation nobody has filed yet. A card decline not recovered within 14 days usually ends the same way.

Take a school with 200 members on November 1, 9 cancellations, 4 freezes past 60 days, and 3 unrecovered declines. True churn is (9 + 4 + 3) ÷ 200 = 16 ÷ 200 = 8%. Counting cancellations alone gives 9 ÷ 200 = 4.5%, a more comfortable number and a wrong one.

What does a 90-day survival curve show that churn misses?

Churn averages everyone together. A survival curve follows each month's new starts separately, so you see which week new members quietly disappear.

Build a simple cohort table. Rows are start months. Columns show how many of that cohort are still active at day 30, day 60, and day 90. In most schools the steepest losses come in the first few months, not in year two, which is why this table deserves its own monthly review.

In martial arts the danger zone often sits between weeks three and six. The intro excitement has worn off, and the first stripe or grading milestone has not arrived yet. Two fixes work in practice. First, schedule an adult's first visible milestone, a stripe or a skills check, by week six. Second, run a day-14 check: any new member with fewer than five check-ins by day 14 gets a call from the head instructor, not the front desk. A full sequence for those first weeks is laid out in the 90-day member onboarding plan.

Where does belt testing fit on a KPI dashboard?

Track test-eligibility conversion: of students who met time and attendance requirements, how many were invited, tested, and paid. Gaps there cost revenue and students.

Treat testing as a three-step funnel: eligible, invited, tested. Define eligibility in hard numbers, for example 24 classes since the last rank for a kids' cycle of about 12 weeks at two classes a week, plus minimum time in grade.

Here is the part many schools miss. A student who has been eligible for more than four weeks without an invitation is a retention risk. Parents often read a stalled rank as a child who has stopped progressing, and that worry is a common reason families give when they cancel. Run the eligibility report 21 days before each testing date so invitations go out with two weeks of notice. How you price the event itself is covered in the guide to belt testing fees.

How do you know whether a class slot earns its place?

Compare attributed revenue per class hour against what the coach costs for that hour. Slots where coach pay runs above half of attributed revenue need a closer look.

Attributed revenue works like this: take each member's monthly fee, divide it by their visits that month to get revenue per visit, then add up the visits in each class.

Worked example: a 6 pm adult Muay Thai class averages 14 attendees on $160-per-month unlimited plans who train 8 times a month.

• Each visit is worth $160 ÷ 8 = $20, so the class earns 14 × $20 = $280.
• The coach is paid $35 an hour for 1.5 paid hours including setup: 1.5 × $35 = $52.50.
• Coach cost is $52.50 ÷ $280 = 18.75% of attributed revenue.
• The 11 am class with 4 attendees earns 4 × $20 = $80 against the same $52.50, or 65.6%.

Do not cut the 11 am slot on that number alone. If those four regulars are shift workers who cannot train at 6 pm, cutting the class risks 4 × $160 = $640 a month in memberships to save $52.50 × 52 ÷ 12 = $227.50 a month in coach pay. Ask them first. Then look at the class scheduling playbook for ways to merge or shorten slots without stranding anyone.

What should coach payroll look like as a KPI?

Track coach cost as a share of class revenue, not raw payroll. Payroll should rise when classes fill and stay flat when they do not.

For a reference point on base wages, the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median pay for fitness trainers and instructors in the low $20s an hour. Check the page for the latest figure. Head coaches with fight records or black-belt lineage often earn more than that, and part-time assistants often earn less.

A flat hourly rate means a packed class and an empty one cost the same. A per-head bonus above a threshold, such as $3 per attendee beyond 10, ties coach pay directly to the dashboard number. Options are compared side by side in the guide to coach pay structures.

How often should each number be reviewed?

Attendance flags weekly, churn and survival monthly, testing conversion per testing cycle, coach cost quarterly. Reviewing everything daily creates noise and reactive schedule changes.

Give every KPI a named owner. If a number belongs to everyone, nobody checks it during a busy week. A single 15-minute Monday meeting covers the weekly flags. Monthly and quarterly numbers get their own slot on the calendar.

Quarterly is the right pace for coach cost because one summer slump or holiday week can make a healthy slot look broken. Wait for eight weeks of data before you touch the timetable.

Which outside benchmarks can a martial arts gym trust?

Few published benchmarks are specific to martial arts, and many circulating figures trace back to software vendors. Your trailing twelve months is the baseline.

Broad demand data is solid. A Health & Fitness Association report found that about 81 million Americans belonged to a gym, studio, or other fitness facility in 2025. It does not break out dojos or boxing gyms, though.

When you see a precise retention percentage quoted for martial arts schools, trace it to its source. If the trail ends at a software company's blog, set it aside. Compare this November with last November and this cohort with last spring's. Those comparisons match your mats, your coaches, and your neighborhood.