Martial Arts Is Evolving – Is Your Karate School?
Hey parents I wanted to spend a couple minutes today talking to you about the new world of self defense.
What I mean by that is, every week, I will hear from either another martial artist or friends from Facebook, somebody talking about some really cool self defense that they just learned, and or maybe a new form that they memorized, and that got me thinking about, how do we think about martial arts.
About 20 to 30 years ago, back in the day, (in the 80s, and into the 90s) it basically was a physical self defense. There was a natural fear that you were going to be grabbed and taken, or you were going to get beat up in a dark alley somewhere. So martial arts came in and filled that void, and started teaching people how to physically take care of themselves. Today, there still is a need for that in some cases, but for the vast majority of us, we are never going to have to learn how to defend ourselves against a gun, or against a knife, or even somebody swinging at us. Definitely a stranger grabbing us and taking us away was the fear that we had a long time ago. Those aren’t things that we necessarily face in our daily lives.
What has started to develop and where martial arts needs to elevate itself is into emotional self defense. I guarantee that just about every single day, your child is going to face some type of challenge, either they are going to get made fun of, they are going to get put down. So, learning how to defend our emotions is a much better skill to teach our kids today, instead of just the basic punch, kick and blocks. Or being able to teach them how to push away the negative thoughts of somebody making fun of them, or somebody doesn’t want to be my friend. Being able to control their emotions so that they don’t act out and end up regretting something that they do.
There is still one more level, the next level that we are really starting to push towards here at Skillz Dynamic Martial Arts is mental self defense. That is self defense against our own minds. How many people do you know that have limiting beliefs or negative mindsets, and so they find that they are not able to do as much in life because they are always finding the negative and why they can’t do things?
Imagine being able to teach your child the skills that most people don’t have. Being able to teach them to stay focused on a goal, to ignore all the negative talk in the world, and to be successful in life. That person is going to be a great leader. And more importantly, that is going to be somebody that uses their martial arts every single day. And at that point, there is no better return on investment than I can think of something that your child is using all the time.
So think about it. It is not about trophies. It is not about going to tournaments and seeing who is the best. It is not about learning this really cool, new self defense, or, another karate form. It is not about memorization. Memorizing things doesn’t help improve your life when it comes to martial arts in general, because you are not going to use a new karate form in your daily life. But learning to train your mind to be sharp, focused and a great leader is something that you are going to be able to use every single day. That is one of the my biggest goals here at Skillz Dynamic Martial Arts. To help our ninjas be able to use their mind, stay focused, stay on task, and become great leaders of tomorrow.