Recently, but not for the first time, a thread came up with a very negative attitude towards our younger fellow martial artists. I wanted to make a place that talks about kids and teens in a positive way. I hope to hear.............. -from instructors and their positive experiences teaching kids. -about students who have kids at their school -Good videos showcasing impressive kids and teenage martial artists -anything along these or similar lines Guidelines approved by the rest of the mod team before I started this thread. -I am not saying nothing negative can be said. If you don't, for example, like a video posted, you can express that. But if this thread gets derailed by kid/ teen bashing, it will be moderated to keep the theme of this thread going. There, are other threads on MAP to express that sort of negativity. - You can cross post a video of a kid/ teen here. Post clips of kids you were impressed by, even if you posted it elsewhere in the past. (But remember to post commentary about why you like it.) Ok, I will get the ball rolling sometime today.
I have watched some pretty amazing kids grow up and become adults at my school. Kids today have much more pressure put on them than when I grew up. More testing in school. I don't think it is a coincidence that many of our long time young students are honor roll students. The lessons in martial arts teaches one to be successful in other areas of life IMO. Many of these kids are involved in other sports or other extra-curricular activities as well. Below are a couple of video's put together by a student who was a teen at the time. It isn't a professional video of my school, you will see a variety of skill levels. He is in the video at several places- like at :30 and at 1:13. [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA52TMfV-zE"]White Dragon Tournament 2007 - YouTube[/ame] This is mostly kids too. A couple of adults mixed in. A video he did the next year. [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RprM3cc76-Q"]White Dragon Tournament 2008 - YouTube[/ame] BTW, he is now an adult. He is one of the two full time instructors at my school. He is a great instructor and an absolutely phenomenal martial artist. I wish there was a more recent video I could show you of him. He hopes to be a Sifu someday. He certainly is capable of reaching this goal. Oh, and he just won our school's Instructor Tournament Grand Championship. He is just one example of a young martial artist who has grown into an amazing adult martial artist and person.
Nice idea of a thread. To be honest, I don't have much to add at this point. I assist at training the kids (up to ca. 11/ 12) at one of "my" clubs and it's fun. Just that. It's two groups: The first up to the age of ~ 6/ 7 and the older ones. The kids are great, so it's just fun (and tough at times ) to teach them. They're very open, playish and cheeky but they also do rather well, considering their ages. We have a three year old: You can actually see and recognize(!) that he's trying to do a Juji-Gatame or O-Soto-Gari. Sure, it's still flawed and wouldn't work like he does it, I admit that - but he's three and attends classes for a good half year. He also plays a lot during class, I won't deny that either. Same for some of the four or five years old. Instead of concentration you have a kid lying on your legs, when your kneeing on front of another. But given their ages, I prefer that over strict discipline and zero-tolerance towards goofing around. They just *can't* concentrate that long, and that's totally fine! The older group is similar, to be honest. We don't have 100% concentration there either, but they do learn their stuff, they have fun, they and the parents like the instructors (a nine year old and an eight year old jump onto my arms to say "hello". If people here would know me, they'd also know why that's interesting and probably a bit weird ). As to videos. I don't do Aikido, so I won't pretend to say that it's failure free or anything, but I was rather impressed by the ukemi of the kid in this video: https://www.facebook.com/849855901691435/videos/1159238994086456/ Not sure how well known or not known the video is. Sorry if it's gone viral on Facebook and everyone knows it already
Well, I am reviving (necro'ing) this thread, rather than starting a new one. Because I ran across this really great video clip of a 4 year old doing some CLF. It really made me wonder if Americans coddle kids too much. I mean, most schools in America don't start kids on MA's until 4 or so years old minimum. People say they don't have the attention span. but is that a product or our culture and child rearing, rather than the kids age? I am not saying it is, but I am wondering about it as a possibility.
Great thread idea, I missed it the first time around. I certainly had the pleasure of seeing many children performing amazingly when I was involved in organising the BCCMA national junior kungfu championship for a few years. That was over a decade ago and I see a few names pop up for those who are now working in the film industry, which is fantastic to see.
In my BJJ class the children have more fun. They roll around laughing. Sometimes adults lose sight that its supposed to be fun.
I haven't really trained with children aside from decades ago when I was a child myself. The only example I can think of is one of the women at my Muay Thai gym trains with her son, who is probably about 12-14. Every time she is there, he is there too. I think its great that they found an activity they enjoy doing together--I would never have been able to get my parents to do a martial art with me. Just not the sort of activity my parents enjoy.
A nice video and incredibly well done for only half a year of training. I don't think I(!) would be able to teach the kids we get that. But I also don't know how they (the kids and coaches of the boy in the video) train. With us it's lots about having fun and learning to move more targeted. Knowing when to use which foot so to speak. As soon as we train techniques with them, I actually agree that the attention span is getting lost; personally I would the train such little kids differently than out headcoach for the little ones does, because of exact that problem. Making such little kids train techniques in too many details and they (well, our anyway) get incredibly bored. So personally I would shorten these moments and change more; it would probably take a while longer for them to learn it that way, but maybe they actually *would*, because they don't get bored, before it even started. I got some kids training info from the national Judo society here; I'm not their biggest fan, but the exercises look like fun for kids, so I will try to have them included a bit more.
One of the guys individual train with is 15 and he's my regular sparring partner for kickboxing and MMA (he's almost the exact same height and build as me). His kickboxing is always improving but the surprising thing recently has been his grappling. In the last month or two he's jumped up and creating scrambles. I'm still pinning him most of the time but it requires maximum effort. Having someone that hot on your heels really encourages me to attend even more classes and try and stay ahead.
