5 Reasons Why Kids Should Practice Martial Arts
If you’re a parent, martial arts is definitely something you should consider for your child. It serves a purpose that goes beyond getting your kids away from electronic devices. Your child can learn many vital life lessons that even apply to adults too. This article is intended to help you understand the many lessons and benefits of martial arts for kids. This way, you can make a more knowledgeable decision.
Reasons Why Kids Should Practice Martial Arts
They Learn Discipline, Focus, and Stillness
The main challenges that some parents face with their children are discipline, stillness, and getting them to remain focused. A dojo, however, is a place that commands all of that and more. All students have to show honor to their instructor and classmates in many martial arts traditions. They often do this by bowing, and this alone reminds everyone that martial arts demand discipline, focus, and respect. The encouragement of discipline and obedience to given instructions fills the atmosphere and students quickly adapt to it. This increases a level of compliance at home for kids that begin practicing martial arts. A child’s challenge of remaining focused has a lot to do with them always being plugged into some form of technology. It can be very beneficial for kids to take regular breaks from technology and engage in stillness and silence. With martial arts, you get the time to focus on yourself and work hard with minimal distractions. As your kids practice martial arts, they’ll learn what it is to be still, challenged, focused, and disciplined.
They’ll Become More Active While Practicing Self-Defense
Martial arts is a perfect way for kids to get active these days. Not every kid is interested in youth sports or PE, which is no longer available in many schools since the pandemic. So, kids are left with few options of ways to remain active. Martial arts however gives you the opportunity to become an extremely fit and healthy person. Along with fitness, martial arts will teach your kids defense. They’ll learn to grapple, punch, block, kick, etc. Martial arts redirect kids’ natural impulses toward aggression and channels them in constructive ways, all while being in a controlled and monitored environment.
Connect With Their Mind, Body and Breathing
Being connected with your mind and body allows you to have more control over yourself and heightened awareness of your emotional construct. Connecting the physical with the mental means tapping into courage, fear, intuition and more. Being able to feel, see and listen internally and externally is what you learn in martial arts. Breathing is also something you learn to better control in martial arts. Your kid will learn about the essence of how to breathe and relax under pressure. The success of how you move your body associates with your breathing, and that is essential for a martial artist to succeed.
Dedication and Determination
Dedication is one of the most essential skills to learn. The routine and guidance from martial arts training press you to care enough to commit to leading a healthy lifestyle. In martial arts, students are well-challenged to dedicate themselves to push their work towards the next level of achievement in their respective disciplines. Kids will learn to stick it out even when it gets hard, and those skills are likely to stay with them into adulthood.
In most martial arts traditions, you’ll see them use a colored belt system of ranking. There’s a certain level of proficiency that each belt represents. It usually requires some kind of test or qualifying examination to obtain. Kids are often compelled to aim for the next level when they see other students wearing a belt of a higher rank. This fuels determination and causes the kids to set measurable goals, as well as push themselves beyond their limits. Your kids will soon learn to force themselves to work harder than ever before.
Learn Conflict Resolution
Resolving confrontations in a healthy manner can often be a challenge for kids and even adults. With martial arts, it isn’t about fighting, it’s about avoiding it. Martial arts instructors teach their students how to resolve conflict in more peaceful ways. Also, how to utilize their skills to deflect potential harm to everyone, including themselves, in a mature manner. The first step is to always talk down opponents in a serious, assured way. Your kids will most likely use their skills learned in martial arts to resolve most conflicts, without any physical altercation outside the ring. In martial arts, you’ll learn to respond without reacting. You’ll have the ability to handle your emotions, maintain self-control and in tense situations, stay calm without responding in anger.
Conclusion
Ground Control is considered one of the premier Martial Arts Schools in the Owings Mills area. We have highly trained, world-class instructors who are here to help you reach your goals.