From Broken Dojos to Lion’s Heart: A New Kind of Karate School
If you've ever trained at a gym that lost its soul, you know the feeling. The energy shifts. The community fades. The place that shaped you becomes just another business with belts on the wall.
Mersina Giampapa watched it happen more than once.
She'd been training since she was three. By 13, she was helping teach. By her early twenties, she'd been through multiple dojos across southern Ontario, and she'd seen the same thing every time: a gym that felt like family would slowly lose that feeling.
Most people would shrug and find another school. Mersina decided to build one where it couldn't happen.
In February 2019, at 24, she opened Lion's Heart Family Martial Arts in Ancaster, Ontario. She'd just finished college with degrees in police foundations and community justice. Fourth-degree black belt in karate, cross-trained in taekwondo and traditional weapons.
No business degree. No investors. Just a clear idea of what a family martial arts school should actually feel like.
Where the Name Came From
The name didn't come from a brainstorming session or a branding agency. It came from a solo trip to South Africa.
Before opening the school, Mersina traveled alone to an animal sanctuary where she spent time with lion cubs. That trip gave the whole thing its name.
Lions are fierce but familial. Protective but communal. That was the school she wanted to build, a place where strength and heart aren't opposites.
And the "Family" in the name? That's not marketing language.
Blood related or not, these students have a familial bond. That's what we are. We're a family.
Think about your own gym's name. Does it mean something, or is it just a label? Mersina picked "Family" on purpose. Not "academy." Not "dojo." Not "club." Family. Because that's what she watched disappear from every other school she trained at.
The Loss That Built This Family Martial Arts School
You don't open a martial arts school at 24 because everything in your training journey went right. You open one because something went wrong.
For Mersina, it was watching the community she loved fracture. Dojos she'd grown up in, places that had shaped her since childhood, would slowly lose whatever made them special. Instructors changed. Priorities shifted. What once felt like family started feeling transactional.
She talks about it matter-of-factly. She lost the community spirit at previous dojos, and she knew she could build something where that wouldn't happen.
So that's what she did. Not just a karate school, but a family martial arts school built to survive the pressures that destroyed the ones she'd loved. The culture was the product. Not the belt tests, not the competition medals, not the monthly dues.
If you've watched a great gym culture fall apart, you know how painful that is. You also know how rare it is to find someone who builds something better instead of just moving on.
Teaching Differently: A Family Martial Arts School Built on Play
Walk into most traditional karate schools and you'll see a familiar setup. Students in lines. Strict commands. Rigid structure. It works for some kids. It doesn't work for all of them.
Mersina took a different approach. If you run kids classes, you know how hard it is to reach every student in the room. Her classes, especially the younger ones, are built around play-based, neurodiversity-friendly methods that meet kids where they are instead of where a curriculum says they should be.
Games. Movement. Creativity inside structure. Every brain works differently, and her teaching adjusts for that.
The techniques are real. The discipline is real. But the delivery actually reaches each kid.
One story captures this philosophy perfectly.
If you're running a family martial arts school, that kind of commitment isn't optional.
Diana: From Helper to Black Belt
Not every great team is assembled through job postings and interviews. Sometimes the best people find you through a mom's Facebook group.
Diana Valliant was 17 when she found a post in a local mom's Facebook group looking for a helper at a karate school for kids. She needed a job. Lion's Heart needed another set of hands.
Four years later, she's 21 with a black belt.
Diana didn't show up and fold towels. She trained. She earned her way to instructor. By 21, she and Mersina were representing Team Canada at the World Championships in Portugal and Buffalo.
From random Facebook hire to world championship teammate. That trajectory tells you what this family martial arts school actually does to people who walk through the door.
For gym owners struggling to find and retain their best members and staff, there's a lesson here. Sometimes your best instructor is the teenager you hire to help with kids' classes. Sometimes the right culture turns employees into family and family into champions.
When Character Shows: Tournament Stories
Competitions reveal who your students really are. Not when they win. When things go sideways.
Mersina tells two stories that clearly illustrate her community vision.
The first is about James and Max at the World Championships. Max had just finished a fight and was deep in an adrenaline dump, that post-competition crash where your body floods with hormones and your emotions go sideways. He was spiraling.
James, another Lion's Heart student, walked over and talked him down. Calmly. Patiently. Using the tools they'd learned in class. Not a coach. Not a parent. Just a kid helping another kid regulate when the pressure got to be too much.
You don't teach that in a kata. That's character.
The second story is about Ryan. His black belt test wasn't just a test. The student who walked in wasn't the same person who'd started years earlier, and everyone in the room could see it.
These are the moments Mersina built Lion's Heart for. Not the trophies. The character behind them. If you're wondering what separates a good karate school for kids from a great one, it's this.
Make Money to Do Karate, Don't Do Karate to Make Money
Ask most gym business consultants about their philosophy and you'll hear about revenue per member, lifetime value, and conversion rates. Ask Mersina and you get eight words that rewrite the whole playbook.
Make money to do karate. Don't do karate to make money.
Read that again. It's not anti-business. It's anti-transactional. The money exists to support the mission, not the other way around. Subtle distinction, but it changes every decision you make.
It changes how you price memberships. How you handle students who can't pay full price. How you respond when a deaf student shows up and every other school has said no. How you invest in a teenage helper who might become a world championship teammate.
When the mission leads, the business follows. When the business leads, the mission usually dies.
Lion's Heart is proof that building long-term member retention through community doesn't mean running a charity. It means running a family martial arts school that knows why it exists and won't compromise on that.
The YouTube Kata Strategy
Here's a practical detail that's worth stealing.
Mersina records videos of katas and posts them to YouTube. Not for marketing. Not for social media engagement. For parents.
When a student is working on a new form at home and can't remember the sequence, their parent can pull up the video and walk them through it. Simple system. Extends the dojo into the living room and removes the "I don't know martial arts, so I can't help" barrier.
Costs almost nothing. Creates real value for families. It's the kind of thing you'd only think of if you actually built your family martial arts school around the families.
She recently discovered Gymdesk's skills tracking feature and wants to link those kata videos directly to member profiles, so each student's curriculum page has videos matched to their rank. It would turn a basic YouTube channel into a structured curriculum tool that parents and students can pull up through their member portal.
Finding Gymdesk During COVID
Every gym owner has a COVID story. Mersina's includes a software switch that changed how she runs her family martial arts school.
When the pandemic hit, her existing management software raised prices. Right when every gym owner was fighting to survive. You're bleeding money, your doors are closed, and your software company picks that moment to charge more.
She started looking for alternatives and found Gymdesk.
"You're actual people and you're actually helping me," she says about the live chat support. In an industry where most support means automated responses and three-day ticket queues, talking to a real person who actually solves your problem matters more than most features.
You're actual people and you're actually helping me.
The switch stuck. Today she uses Gymdesk for booking and scheduling, attendance tracking, the member portal, and the built-in shop.
That shop migration is its own story. She'd been running her school store through Square, linked to her website. It worked, but it was clunky. When she moved everything to Gymdesk's shop, a parent who was doing her SEO noticed the difference.
"She told me the shop looked great," Mersina laughs. "I didn't do it. Gymdesk did it."
That's what good gym software should feel like. Something that quietly makes your school look more professional while you focus on what you actually care about: teaching.
Building a Family Martial Arts School That Lasts
Mersina opened Lion's Heart at 24 with no business background and a mission most people would call idealistic. Build a family martial arts school that actually stays a family. Teach every kid, including the ones other schools turned away. Develop instructors instead of just hiring them. Compete on the world stage while keeping the heart of a community dojo.
Five years later, she's done all of it. A school that develops its students into leaders. Students who represent their country. A deaf student thriving where everyone said it couldn't work. A name that means exactly what it says.
The lesson for other gym owners isn't complicated. But it is hard.
Build the culture first. Everything else follows.
Don't do karate to make money. Make money to do karate.
And when someone tells you their kid can't do it? Learn sign language.
Watch the full story of Lion's Heart Family Martial Arts:
Watch the full story of Lion's Heart Family Martial Arts in our Gymdesk Originals series.
Running a family martial arts school means wearing every hat—instructor, admin, marketer, accountant. Gymdesk helps gym owners automate billing, track attendance, manage schedules, and run their pro shop—all in one place. So you can focus on what you opened your school for: teaching. Start your free trial today.
Gym management software that frees up your time and helps you grow.
Simplified billing, enrollment, student management, and marketing features that help you grow your gym or martial arts school.
