build your knowledge and become an expert children's martial arts coach

The benefits of developing a growth mindset and stepping out of your comfort zone
Coaching

10 benefits of cultivating a Growth Mindset in your martial arts students

Henry Ford is reported to have said “Whether you think you can or you can’t you’re right”. This short quote highlights that your mindset can have a big impact on your actions. Your ability to learn and develop is dependent on you believing that with hard work, you can achieve. ...
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Coaching

Character development through children’s martial arts

Most martial arts clubs promote character development in their martial arts training. Indeed, if you look at any social media post advertising taekwondo, karate or ju jitsu (or any other martial arts) classes, you would be forgiven for thinking that stepping on the mats and kicking and punching each other ...
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Pushing action from Functional Movement Patterns
Coaching

8 functional movement Patterns for your kids martial arts programme

Although Functional Movements Patterns (FMP) have appeared in many different adult strength based systems over the last couple of decades, they were initially discovered through the observation of infant’s growth and motor skill development. (Wu et al., 2020). If you watch the way a young child performs a deep squat ...
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Coaching

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 ...
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Coaching

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 ...
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Coaching

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 ...
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Coaching

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 ...
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Coaching

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 ...
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Business

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 ...
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Business

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 ...
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