Obviously learning how to protect yourself, makes you surer of yourself and makes you not worried that what you say to someone might get you punched in your face; because you know you can handle it. But more importantly, from the first day of lessons, when kids come into a martial art school they’re developing confidence, especially the younger children. It’s an environment they’ve never seen before. It’s very different from the schools they’ve been to or some of their academic school or kids’ playroom. So just coming in and meeting an instructor clad, a black belt, in a white or black uniform can be scary at first but learn that when they actually talk with the person, they find out that this person who might look kind of scary was actually friendly This helps them want to be more outgoing and meet people and instills confidence in a social setting.

Second, is they are constantly trying new things in class.  I’ve been teaching martial arts for 36 years, and ass time has gone on the willingness of children to try new things or God forbid fail at something has dramatically decreased. Kids more and more say things like, “I can’t do it” before they even try it. I don’t know where this risk-adverse cultures come from, but just having children try something new and only stick to things, they’re good at it is a real problem. The great thing in a martial arts class is that they try something and even if they cannot do it,  the will be encouraged to try it again and try it again until they are able to do it proficiently.   As a Child sees that if they work at something they get they get better at it, he or she will develop confidence in themselves, especially when they master something that they didn’t think they could do.

We’ve had I have a game that like you called Ninja Mountain. I picked up from a program years ago that the kids run and jump over kick shields, and each round you would stack more and more pads on At my last school, the record was eight kick shields. This feat was accomplished by a kid, who at first couldn’t jump over even one. When he first came to us he was not very athletic or coordinated, but with constant practice, in an encouraging environment, he was eventually able to do it.  And when he jumped over that eighth pad, the look on his face was just amazing.

So, the constant reinforcement of trying something hard, that at first seems that the child can’t do it, but by working at it with someone helping you can do it. You can do it and keep helping them with it until they’re able to do it. This process builds massive REAL self-confidence. I hate the term self-esteem because it’s misused. It’s based on nothing, just you should just feel good about yourself for no reason. But that false self-esteem will shatter if tested

In martial arts, the greatest way that really supercharges a child, or even an adult’s self-confidence is when a student has to spar for the first time with somebody who’s much bigger and more skilled than he or she is. This is the perfect dress rehearsal for the bully on the playground.  There’s nothing that is as good for standing up to a bully for the first time. And then learning that even if you get hit, you can survive it and maybe get some likes into all in a cooperative learning helpful environment. This teaches them that even in really scary situations when they may take a few licks they can deal with it and come out victorious, or at least stronger from the experience.

IF YOU WANT TO DEVELOP UNSHAKABLE SELF-CONFIDENCE IN YOUR CHILD LET US HELP!

We know that when you are looking for a martial arts school for you or your child, it can be confusing: karate, TKD, BJJ, judo, or kung-fu. Which style to choose? May I suggest Muay Thai.

The reason you or your child should be training Muay Thai instead of karate is for many reasons. The biggest one is that for karate, you have one way of moving and  a set of techniques when you’re doing forms, also called Kata, then you have a totally different way of moving when you are doing sparring and even different techniques, different stances, and we may even look close to you are kickboxing, depends on the style of the Karate spar. Then, when you’re doing self-defense moves, yet again, it looks totally different from both sparring and from the forms as well. When you train, Muay Thai, you fight how you train. You train one-way for shadow boxing, hitting pads, hitting the bag, sparring, and of course, fighting, which would also translate into how you defend yourself. So you’re only training one way. You learn one set of moves, principles, and techniques that goes throughout all your training. So you don’t have any confusion about muscle memory, and you don’t have any conflicting information in your body. So it makes it a lot easier to learn real self-defense and fighting skills.

What to get started on your our child’s martial arts journey today?  If you are in the Murfreesboro Tenessee area check us out today.

Years ago when I was studying budo taijutsu, a friend of mine Rick, told me about the concept of aliveness, and after studying the concept, and then going to several seminars dealing with the subject, I made it the foundation of how I trained and taught martial arts.

Aliveness is training with resistance using energy, timing and motion. Aliveness is training with resistance using energy, timing and motion. Regardless of your martial art, it is critical to make functional and demonstrable improvements in performance. If the art you train does not include some form of unscripted pressure testing it is not functional and you will not be able to perform, that move, combination or movement in a real situation. For a Drill to be alive there must be variations in timing, energy, and motion,. It takes all for a drill to be alive.
Remember – ALL 3.
A choreographed assault that gets counted by a planned series of responses ending with a throw, such as you see in budo taijutsu or Krav Maga minus the throw, lacks timing, energy and motion. The assault is predictable. A realistic energy, as in a resistance, is non-existent, and the movement is, choreographed. Now in functional training, you do need to start out with a compliant partner and some predetermined sequences, however, the error is stopping there, when it is the actual starting point. In Muay Thai you may start by doing individual strikes or combinations, or grappling moves without any resistance, from a partner however, within a short amount of time you will add in unpredictable movement, additional moves or responses to more closely resemble a Muay Thai match or self-defense situation.

Aliveness is not just Sparring

I’ve noticed a discussion about aliveness does come up people make the mistaken assumption that  “aliveness” is just  “sparring”

You can drill with Aliveness but the drill has to contain timing, energy (resistance) and motion.

So you can have a drill where one guy is going to work the jab only.

The feeder has to move around and then hold up the target ever once in a while. (Movement and timing.)

The feeder, every once in a while, throws a shot back to make sure the jabber is covering properly. (Resistance.)

So while this is still just a very “light” drill it’s one done with Aliveness.

You then add onto it…jab, hook…etc. which will eventually lead to sparring.
In conclusion, if you want to develop real-world self-defense skills you need to include aliveness at every training session.

For Training Muay Thai in an alive fashion

For Kids Muay Thai training in Murfreesboro Tennessee: https://nakmartialartstn.com/kids-muay-thai-classes/

For Adult Muay Thai training in Murfreesboro Tennessee: https://nakmartialartstn.com/adult-muay-thai-classes/

Additional Reading on Aliveness

Why Aliveness? by Matt Thornton
It’s Aliveness – Still by Matt Thornton

Based on all of over a 2 decades working with a child development specialist. I was taught that children show developmental milestones based on specific age groups. For Martial arts ages, especially Muay Thai, I Believe the best age groups are:

4 & 6 
 7 to 9,
10 to 14.
15-17
This was unheard of  (And still unfortunately today) as most martial arts schools divided their children into two age groups: 6 and under and 7 and up.  Worse some schools for convenience would do ‘family style’ classes from age 3 all the way to adult.

By properly dividing up Children’s classes into more specific age groups I found that it solved many hair-pulling challenges that would occur daily in classes.  for the younger students EVERY drill was “too hard” and  “too easy” for the older students.

My Muay Thai Curriculum for children takes all that I learned from working with and teaching a child development program to applying it to my Muay Thai KIDZ program so that children could get the valuable self defense skills from Muay Thai kickboxing while doing so in an age-appropriate.  In other words teaching children real martial arts with a solid understanding of child development.

Muay Thai KIDZ is an integrating Systems That MAXIMIZES Learning. The curriculum includes ACTIVE LEARNING, and Game-Based Learning drills that kids “play” so that their WORKING MEMORY is stimulated. Not All Schools the same.  Even if a school properly Separates children into the correct age groups, they may not understand the child’s stage of development, and the Curriculum would reflect that. As you can see, Muay Thai KIDZ takes training to a whole new level! In fact, kids can’t even join their first class without an age-specific pre-evaluation to identify where his or her strengths are, and also how our program will help in his or her overall growth and development. Muay Thai KIDZ is a product with several decades of ongoing research and development in how children learn and grow. PLUS a deep understanding the art of Muay Thai.

The overall results are children that become the best versions of themselves: physically, intellectually, emotionally, and even socially!