Should You Encourage Your Kids to do Martial Arts?

As parents, you might shudder when you hear someone mention ‘Martial Arts’ to your child, and rightfully so. We all want to protect our kids and martial arts sounds like a dangerous sport to consider doing. After all, why can’t they just do football or tennis instead?  

Let the next few paragraphs change your mind as we go through why parents shouldn’t be so hasty to dismiss martial arts. Once you understand the benefits and the safety measures taken by its practitioners, you can be sure that this can be an amazing sport for your children to partake in.

Non-Contact Options

First of all, don’t fall into the trap of thinking that martial arts has to be a contact sport. There are many non-contact forms of martial arts for your kids to do - such as karate, taekwondo and judo. All these martial arts can be performed with full contact, or no contact. So if you are concerned that your child will get hurt physically by another martial artist, remove that thought because there is no need to worry. You can simply enrol them into a non-contact martial arts class to make sure they will have zero physical contact with anyone else.

If you and your children are comfortable with taking part in full-contact martial arts, you can find gyms that offer this option. However it is not recommended for young children to undertake the full-contact alternative as it does introduce the risk of getting hurt - bruises, sprains and head injuries are some of the more dangerous injuries kids can suffer. For this reason, experts encourage kids to do non-contact martial arts rather than the more risky full-contact version.

The Many Benefits of Martial Arts

Moving onto the benefits of martial arts for kids - there are too many to count! Your child’s self confidence will go through the roof when they start doing martial arts. Not only will they gradually increase their skill by going up in the ranking system (when they get a new belt), but they will feel a sense of accomplishment every time they go up a rank. Setting goals and achieving them will give them a sense of pride, and they’ll be sure to understand the value of hard work.

Kids’ classes also tend to be in groups, with all the children learning together from 2-3 main instructors. This presents a great opportunity for your children to create a bond with their fellow classmates, and to learn new skills together. Being in an unfamiliar environment such as a martial arts dojo gives them the opportunity to adjust to new surroundings better, which they can carry over to life outside martial arts. If your child is quiet and struggles in social situations, putting them into a martial arts class is a great idea as they can improve their communication skills.

Great Exercise

Other than this, martial arts offers a full-body physical workout - perfect for your children to live a happy and healthy lifestyle. It is an activity that preaches respect and teaches values to an extent no other sport can compare with.

As parents, you should acknowledge the risks of full-contact martial arts, while also realising that no-contact martial arts is a much better and safer alternative. It’s also clear to see that martial arts offers a great many benefits, so it definitely should be something you should encourage your kids to do.

Photo by Timothy Eberly on Unsplash