Below is a culling progression, beginning with generalities and ending with specifics.

1. Looking for a low rent facility will steer you towards schools or gyms that are less commercial. Generally basement, loft and recreation center operations will be more focused on combat than profit.

2. If you wish to consider a program located in a high rent facility go for a free standing building. Avoid mall and strip mall locations, unless you have a referral for a coach or instructor at this location, and or the owner has invested in visible equipment; such as a ring, cage, bag array, mats.

3. Never ever enter a school that has after school vans.

4. Avoid programs that cater to women, children and families. You are looking for a wolf pit, not a petting zoo.

5. There must be appropriate protective equipment: grappling schools must have mats, boxing gyms gloves and headgear; weaponry programs protective masks and gloves. The coach should be able to answer a battery of questions off the top of his head concerning the equipment use and properties, particularly if the equipment is not worn.

6. Facilities where striking arts and weapon arts are practiced must have striking apparatus: bags, posts, ropes, dummies, mitts, etc.

7. Weaponry programs that are non-contact are to be avoided.

8. Weaponry training that focuses on tapping weapons together should be avoided. You would not pay a boxing coach that primarily taught fighters to punch the opponent’s gloves, or a grappling coach that focused on actually attacking and damaging the opponent’s uniform, would you?

9. Boxing gyms and contact weaponry clubs should pair new fighters up for sparring against the best fighters in the gym. Paring off new fighters to spar with each other is either reckless of the new fighters’ safety or done to build false confidence.

10. Any type of combat art should only teach basic fundamentals to beginners. The longer a boxing coach waits to teach the hook, the better he is. The boxing trainer who teaches the hook in the first lesson is incompetent as a coach, no matter how good his hook might be. A stick or knife fighting instructor who teaches disarms on the first lesson, or before the student has acquired proficient mobility and weapon usage, is selling fantasy. Likewise, be suspicious of a grappling coach who teaches joint locks, chokes and submissions before position, control and transition. Lack of fundamentals instruction is the mark of either incompetence or fraud.

Few training venues are perfect. However, any venue that does not have any of the big potential negatives above attached to it should be well worth your while.