Every year, Australian martial arts students, teams, and academies travel overseas for training camps, competitions, and seminars. And every year, a significant number of them travel with insurance that specifically excludes the activities they are travelling to do.



Standard travel insurance policies routinely list martial arts — particularly contact-based and competitive martial arts — under their hazardous activities exclusions. The policy looks like travel insurance. It covers the flight delay and the lost luggage. But when the student is injured during a sparring session in Thailand or a competition in Japan, the medical claim is excluded because the activity that caused the injury was not covered under the standard policy wording.

This is not a technicality. It is the design of the product. Standard travel insurance is not built to cover martial arts training and competition. A specialist product is.

An Important Distinction: This Is a Corporate Package

The martial arts travel insurance product available through Gym Insurance Brokers is specifically arranged as a corporate package for gym owners and promoters — not as individual athlete cover. This distinction is important for understanding who it is designed for and how it works.

If you are a gym owner or promoter taking a team — your students, your instructors, your delegation — to train or compete overseas, this is the product designed for your situation. It is a group arrangement that covers the individuals within the delegation travelling under your organisation. If you are an individual athlete travelling independently without a school or club affiliation, you would need to source individual travel cover through a retail insurer who explicitly covers your activities.

What Standard Travel Insurance Gets Wrong for Martial Artists

The problem with standard travel insurance for martial artists begins with how the policy defines 'sports' and 'hazardous activities.' Most standard policies cover recreational sport at a non-competitive level — a casual swim, a yoga class, a round of golf. Martial arts training — particularly training that involves physical contact with another person — sits in a different category entirely.

Policies that appear to cover 'sport' often contain exclusions for contact sports, combat sports, or activities involving striking and grappling. A student injured during pad work at a Thai boxing camp, during a judo randori session, or during a BJJ training camp could find that every element of the trip is covered except the activity that caused the injury. The medical costs in countries like Japan, the United States, or even Thailand for a serious injury can be substantial. The risk of travelling without appropriate cover is real and financially significant.

No Restriction on Styles or Contact

The martial arts travel insurance we arrange covers training and competing in martial arts because that is what martial artists actually do. There is no restriction on the style — karate, BJJ, Muay Thai, MMA, judo, taekwondo — and no restriction on the level of contact involved in training, from light technical work through to full-contact sparring. This is precisely the gap that standard travel products leave open.

If your team is travelling to Thailand for a Muay Thai training camp that includes full-contact sparring rounds, the cover reflects that. If your delegation is competing in a grappling tournament in Japan, the cover reflects that. The product is designed around what martial artists actually do overseas, not around an assumption of recreational activity.

Arrange Early

Travel insurance for martial arts groups should be arranged early in the planning process — at the point of booking flights and accommodation, not as an afterthought the week before departure. Early arrangement gives us time to structure the cover properly around your specific destination, the activities involved, the size of the delegation, and any specific requirements of the event you are attending.

Last-minute travel insurance applications are possible but limit the options available and can leave less time to address specific coverage questions that arise in the application process.