How To Teach Martial Art For Kids

Teachers at dojo must be a good example for their students like teachers at school. Your dojo must safe for kids both physical and mental health.

These how to teach self defense and fighting sport for kids properly:

- You must act like real school teacher, be nice.

- Teach your techniques as fun game, for aerobic exercise and for self defense. Not for violence.

- No difficult nonsense theories, no delusional mystic things. Just teach them how to punch and kick (martial art dojo is sport club, not occult sect!!).

- For basic aerobic - self defense clubs, 5 years old is the minimum age requirement to learn basics of self defense, because their mind and body ready for basic self defense training.

- For fighting sport (for pro athletes) clubs, late middle school ages (11-12) is the safest minimum age to doing sparring fight or participate in fighting tournament (with modified-special rules, using very limited techniques for their safety), because your kids now mature enough to respect the tournament rules and control their emotion.

- For martial dance (like Wushu Taolu and Karate Kata) clubs, 5 years old is permitted to join the club but they join for introduction / for fun. 5 years old students are not expected to mastering difficult martial dance forms (Taolu / Kata / Jurus / Poomsae) yet, unlike middle school students.

- For grappling sport (like Wrestling and Judo) club, early high school ages (12-13) is the safest minimum age to start training. Grappling moves relying on raw muscle strength and the student’s body must developed first to training well.

Proper Shoe For Martial Art Training

Before buying shoe for training, check it sole first.

Expensive price and famous brands are not guarantee that shoe will be useable for martial art training well. You must check the sole carefully.

Light and flat soled shoe is the proper design for fighting sport training. Doing a quick footwork, high kicking and balancing the body will be easier with light and flat soled shoe.

Alternative footwear for martial art training is strap sandal (sandal with strap) used by ancient warriors. This sandal model is still used by Silat, Kenpo and Karate communities today.

Strap sandal will not fly away when you doing kick, you can do any kicks you like. Honestly, training with strap sandal is more comfortable for me, it's much cooler than shoe because you don't need to wear sock (especially during hot weather, very helpful).

“What should i do if i was attacked on the street while wearing unproper footwear?”

Just do what japanese Samurai did, if they attacked by assassins on street while wearing wooden sandal (Geta), they throw away their sandal and fight barefooted like in Karate - Kenpo training.

If you’re unable to throw your sandal, then just use your punches, elbow strikes and pressure point strikes. Just like ancient middle eastern - african boxers did many centuries ago when they fight against bandits while wearing sandal and long dress (that is another reason why ancient Boxing only train hand techniques, because at that time there is no proper clothing and footwear which allow the fighters using high kicks).

How To Land The Foot After Kicking

There are 2 methods to land your foot after kicking:

How To Training Martial Art

Based on training goal, martial art club is divided into 2 different types: Fighting Sport and Martial Dance.

A. Fighting Sport

For the beginning, we will start from Fighting Sport first as the oldest basic of all martial art type. Generally there are 3 training sessions in Fighting Sport club:

1. Stretching

Begin your training with stretching exercise slowly.

2. Basic Techniques

Train all your 6 basic strikes in 10 counts repetition for each techniques slowly (do it slowly!! Hitting the air too hard will hurt your elbow and shoulder joints).

Once finished, take a short break for 1 minute.

3. Extra Training

You can choose 1 extra training you like, for examples:

- Belly Breath Punch (using belly / abdominal breathing, your punch will hit harder).

- Elbow and knee strikes (self defense techniques for tight space combat).

- Pressure point strikes (self defense techniques to hit opponent vital points).

- Blocking (stopping opponent’s strike).

- Trapping (immobilize opponent’s arm).

- Sparring fight (sadly, we only can do proper sparring fight using proper gears at professional fighting club with our friends).

- Weapon fighting techniques (Use toy - dummy weapon for safety. Every dojo train different weapon style depend on the dojo owner’s personal interest).

B. Martial Dance

Now we will learn about training method in Martial Dance club. In this martial art club, there is no “Extra Training” because they already merged all basic strikes, extra strikes and blocking techniques into their dance choreography.

So they only do 2 training sessions: Stretching and dance choreography training (they also didn't do sparring fight, of course because their main focus is martial dance training).

In Martial Dance club, there is belt rank system used to tell how many dance forms mastered by the student.

Each belt rank must mastering 1 new dance form. For example in Karate Kata, white belt must mastering form 1, yellow belt must mastering form 2, and black belts (masters) means they already mastering all basic dance choreos.