Martial Arts Curriculum
Martial Arts Curriclum for Kids
As a Karate Sensei there are several why having a good curriculum is a vital component to having a good group of martial arts students that can help with your journey as a parent or student going into a school. With my experience Ill walk down what makes our school different and what key concepts we cover that make us stand out with our curriculum both looking into a school and relating it to our dojo as well. We will go over what you should look, and what I’ve been be successful in other martial arts schools.
Life Skills Curriculum
A lot of times people forget that there are more benefits to martial arts then fighting and self defense. We need to be able to use these challenges to teach children how to0 apply these hardships to everyday life. We need to be able to teach kids respect and understanding how to listen to people and guide them to success. This take hard work and determination which can be taught through martial arts training. At Ageless Martial Arts (AMA ) we instill these values in them so they are able to achieve some unique abilities to apply it outside of the dojo.
These are life skills such as the following.
- Discipline: To always do your best
- Respect: To treat people the way you want to be treated.
- Confidence: To believe in yourself
- Manners: Act and speak with respect
- Fitness: Exercise
- Focus: To pay attention
- Coordination: Move your body well
- Black Belt: Live your best life
- Teamwork: Work together
- Memory: To remember
- Control: To have power over yourself
- Gratitude: TO be grateful
- Family: The most important thing in your life
(Credit Kids Love Skills by Brannon Beliso )
Mindset before the Battle
There are so many examples of everyday life skills our students lean and these are just some of the few we offer at AMA. Without these concepts and mindset differences we would not be able to create a good martial arts student. Mindset is always first before learning how to fight, because if you have a weak mind you’ll always lose in the long run and eventually it will catch up.
The biggest issue with many potential clients is that they forget that martial arts is a long term skill. Like anything you want or desire you have to put in the work and change your life style to get the benefits in. Things take time and you need an environment to get the skills to get what you want. Understanding this mindset early will help you get there. There are many forms of mindset training we do meditation before and after class being one of them.
As a Shotokan Karate practitioner, our goal is to get the mind focus to train and prepare for a hard task at hand so we can put all our efforts in it.
Meditation is a very essential part of our curriculum. because it helps the student not only focus on relax but focus at the task ahead and really try to put all of their mindset on a lesson and understands its concepts and purpose as they are learning the technique later applying this outside their lives.
The Beginning ( White Belt)
In the beginning it more excitement rather and the plan here is just to give you some basic effective moves that will work quickly. This is also the beginning stages and teaching you basics here. Basics are the fundamentals of every martial arts program, they should be fun and effective in the beginning. We don’t believe in too much negative reinforcement because it can discourage students from staying. I know that some schools want to weed out the weak, and this is something I just don’t believe in. In my earlier years I found that pushing beginners too much can create harder situations and that’s why its best to do it over time.
While other schools might argue your teaching a water down system by not pushing them, Ive always believed there should be a balance between pushing a student and hurting them physically and mentally. Remember it i just the beginning we want to introduce them to martial arts as a whole.