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What is martial arts? Who is it good for? How does it help? These days, more and more people are asking these questions. What is it about martial arts training that has made it so popular today - especially for kids?
Martial Arts has gone from being this mystical, fringe activity practiced in dark basements by mostly testosterone driven young men to an activity the entire family can participate in. These days it's enjoyed by the youngest child to the oldest adult.
I personally started taking taking Taekwon-Do when I was 18. But I fell in love with it as a young child. However when I was a kid in the seventies, parents didn't enroll kids in martial arts. Kids played baseball, football and soccer.
But it was watching Kung Fu theatre every Saturday followed by re-enacting it with the neighborhood kids after-wards that enticed me. Bruce Lee was already gone by the time I was 6. But his legend lived on in us.
Then a seminal moment in recent martial arts history happened. The Karate Kid was released in 1984. After that, everything changed. Parents flocked to Karate schools by the droves.
They saw in that movie that martial arts wasn't like what was taught at the Cobra Kai Karate Dojo (that's where the bad guys practiced in the movie). They wanted their child to be transformed by Mr. Myagi the way Daniel was.
You see, martial arts training always has been about discipline, respect, self control, focus and indomitable spirit. Before the Karate Kid, most people just saw it as fighting. After, they began to realize it really was about building character.
This one movie flooded schools with droves of young students. The only problem is many schools had literally no idea how to teach kids. All of the sudden they found themselves in uncharted waters and high tide was coming.
To make matters worse, many schools didn't realize they were doing more harm to many than good. As many schools went from having an active student count of about 40 adults to 125 kids, they had to change the way they taught. But many didn't.
Many of these schools who used the 'old way' of teaching were making strong people stronger and weak people quit. That's because even though it has an amazing and deep character education built right into it, it was created for adults.
More than that, it was created for military use. Not the ideal situation for kids as young as 3 years old.
Doesn't matter how well martial arts can build character. If you teach it to a 7 year old the same way you would a 27 year old, the great lessons are just lost. What's worse is that it isn't any fun for the child and potentially will ruin martial arts for them forever.
This continues even now. Many schools still exist in that seventies mindset that I remember from my youth. Instructors pass down and teach what was passed down to them. They blindly follow 'tradition'.
They don't stop to think that the reason behind the founder of their art punching a brick wall wasn't to strengthen his fist at all. It was because he was trying to knock a lose brick from his jail cell so he could escape. I'm making that up, but the point is that the tradition behind something may or may not always be what it seems.
Peeling away the tradition is important. Often it reveals huge deficiencies that could potentially be harmful if practiced by adults let alone kids.
I grew up in Danbury, Connecticut which isn't exactly the mean streets of New York City. But I probably would never have made it in these 'old school' style dojos of the seventies if I had taken it as a kid.
I started taking martial arts as an adult because of my love of the old fashioned movies. I wanted to be Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris.
But as I continued and got better I discovered a deeper reason for why I started and continued. Something I must have kept hidden from myself. I wanted to feel better about myself.
See, I was bullied as a kid. This isn't uncommon. Most kids experience some type of bullying by the time they are in 3rd grade.
For me, it turned me inward. I was shy, a loner and afraid to try new things. I developed the real bad habit of giving up before I even tried things.
I started martial arts because I thought it would make me a fighting machine who would make bullies quiver in their moon pants (hey, I started martial arts in the eighties). But what I discovered is martial arts training can profoundly rebuild people from the inside out.
If it wasn't for martial arts I never would have gone to college, never would have had the guts to think I could work at any job other than grocery store clerk. It changed my life.
This is why I teach. This is why I own and run Zandri's Martial Arts in Brookfield, Connecticut. This is why I help other school owners all over the world to run better schools.
I love breaking down the misconceptions of the 'old school' martial arts mentality. I love showing people our rich character education curriculum. I love showing people how martial arts can give the shyest child superhuman confidence. How it can help a child with ADD/HD come off their medications.
More than that, I love seeing people really benefit from it. There's nothing more gratifying than seeing the absolute personal empowerment that comes from martial arts training.
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