3.42 million Americans practiced martial arts in the past year.
So why are so many kids practicing martial arts? As it turns out, there are a lot of benefits that come with regular martial arts practice. These can help set a kid with skills that will help them the rest of their life.
Here are the top ten benefits of martial arts for kids.
1. Build Confidence
There’s a lot that goes into a martial arts practice. It all contributes to the way that they build confidence.
Kids learn to control their bodies. They learn to manage the force they use, and the movements they want.
They learn to defend themselves. They learn to respect themselves. They learn discipline.
Each of these factors into building confidence. A martial arts practice can teach your kids that they can overcome anything. They can push through any hardship.
Martial arts also relieves stress, which can ease anxiety. This too contributes to a child’s self-confidence.
2. Build Strength
Martial arts can be especially rewarding for kids who struggle with team-oriented sports. Many kids need an outlet for their energy, something that rewards their efforts.
And sometimes team sports just don’t cut it. They need a productive outlet that’s more tailored to their needs.
So even if your kid has struggled with other sports in the past, they should consider martial arts. They’ll build strength and get exercise. So on top of these benefits from martial arts, they can still enjoy the benefits of regular exercise, like healthy habits, endorphin release, and stress relief.
3. Improve Self Control
Learning moves takes practice, repetition, and perseverance. You can’t get it right the first time, so you have to keep pushing yourself to try harder. You have to learn to balance the right amount of force with direction and coordination.
All of this puts together improves a child’s self-control.
4. Boosts Focus
Martial arts can be especially good for kids with ADHD and other attention problems. It boosts the ability to focus and follow through with an action or routine. Kids who practice martial arts can focus for longer periods than those who don’t practice.
5. Improves Street Awareness
Kids who learn martial arts pay better attention to the surrounding environment. This can make the difference between safety and danger. Kids learn to pay attention if they’re in a bad neighborhood, or a sketchy person approaches them.
They learn to trust their intuition and avoid dangerous scenarios. This alone can help keep them safe.
6. It Teaches Respect
Most martial arts are based on a foundation of respect. Respect for the room, for the teacher, for themselves and the environment. Even when lessons are over, kids who practice martial arts can bring it into the real world around them.
Some parents worry that martial arts make kids more violent, but that’s simply not the case. They learn to respect the world around them, not react violently to it.
7. Teaches Goal Setting and Perseverance
If a student wants to learn a particular routine, they have to break the set down into small motions and actions. But these routines build on top of each other. It’s the same way you need to learn how to add fractions before you can learn to multiply them.
So if a kid wants to learn the entire routine, they have to learn to break it down. This transfers over into real-world goal setting and perseverance skills. A child can look back on practicing a particular routine and how all the small steps got them to their goal.
8. Builds Discipline
To get good at martial arts, it takes practice, perseverance, and discipline. Practicing martial arts builds valuable skills. Kids can transfer these skills into other areas of their lives.
Discipline can help them push through hard times. It’s there when they’re struggling with school, other skills, or friendships. It can get them past the hurdle when they learn to apply for scholarships and college. It teaches them to keep going, no matter what.
9. Improves Self-Defense
Most parents enroll their kids in martial arts to teach them self-defense, and this is a good way to go. Kids who practice martial arts are better at defending themselves.
So if you want your kid to know what to do if they’re in danger, enroll them in martial arts. It’ll help them stay calm in a crisis, and get to safety.
Especially with classes for younger children, martial arts teaches tactics to avoid dangerous areas and people. But they also teach nonviolent skills that help a kid who may be dealing with bullies at school.
10. Improves Balance, Posture, and Coordination
Martial arts works on building moves slowly, piece by piece. It requires balance to move smoothly and slowly from one move into another.
Kids learn to stand up straight and hit their target where they’re aiming. They learn to block oncoming attacks. All of this works to build a child’s balance, coordination, and posture.
Martial Arts for Kids Is Loaded With Benefits
Kids as young as three years old can take martial arts for kids classes. This will help set them up for the rest of their life.
It’ll instill a sense of respect and self-confidence. It’ll help them defend themselves, and improve their strength, balance, coordination, and posture.
So if you want to help your kids, enroll them in a martial arts class.
Ready to take advantage of all the benefits martial arts has to offer? Sign up for our classes today.