build your knowledge and become an expert children's martial arts coach
Perceptual motor skills through martial arts
This is where the rubber hits the road and you take the standalone Fundamental Movement Skills (FMS) and Functional Movement Patterns (FMP) and incorporate them into drills and activities that include the use of the student’s senses. Perceptual motor skills can be broken down in to two parts. The first …
Building Physical Literacy With Your Children’s Martial Arts Programme
The problem We hear all the time that children are doing less sport and physical activity in schools. If they have a 60 minute slot for PE and the first 10 minutes is spent changing in to their PE gear and the last 10-15 minutes to get a shower and …
Physical stages of development for young children practicing martial arts
The knowledge of the physical stages of development is a priority if you want to maximise the development of your martial arts students. Sometimes we may feel we are not very good at delivering sessions to the young children in our care. They don’t always listen and sometimes they ‘just …
Creating a system for categorising martial arts games for kids
I often hear of coaches talking about fun martial arts games or karate games for kids. A common theme is when one coach talks about a drill they love and the other coach says ‘Yes, our students used to love that game but we haven’t played it for ages.’ This …
Is strength training for children healthy?
When anyone mentions strength training for children some coaches will get a picture in their head of a young child trying to use the weights you would expect to find in an adult gym. This picture generally describes weight lifting rather than strength training but as these terms are often …
Lil Dragon vs Skillz VS MAPLE
Introduction Children’s martial arts programmes have been available since around the year 2000 when Melody Johnson (was Shuman) introduced her Little Ninja’s programme and Kimber Hill (now Tyee) released her Lil Dragon programme (2001). These two coaches created a new sector within the martial arts community by writing programmes specifically …
12 benefits of having a childrens martial arts programme?
I put a lot of the success of our clubs down to having a great childrens martial arts programme. When we first moved our small club of around 40 members to our first full time venue, we kept increasing the number of 4-6 year old classes until we had 2 …
FUNdamental Movement Skills for children’s martial arts
Often abbreviated to FMS, FUNdamental Movement Skills describe the ability to move the body in specific patterns using different body parts. They cover both gross and fine motor skills and are usually broken down in to three groups; locomotion, balance and object control. These skills are the building blocks the …
Gradings for young children in martial arts – are you comparing apples with oranges?
We all want the best for our young ninjas but how do gradings help us develop the children? Developing their skills, physical abilities and positive physiological characteristics are at the top of our list of goals. So how do we use gradings to build these traits? Should we be using …
Do stickers motivate children if used as a reward in your children’s martial arts classes?
The answer to the question in the headline is ‘Of course they do, they motivate children to want stickers’. Though the answer to the question may not be what we want when trying to motivate children to try harder, pay attention or even stop playing with that dam equipment…… sorry, …
