Participation trophies get a bad rep, and perhaps rightly so. Participation in itself shouldn't really be cause for reward. But, it does have one idea right in concept, and that is that winning is not everything, especially with kids.

Even if the ultimate goal is to be the best, winning isn't everything.  It's something we can't control, all we can control is ourself and our own effort.

The thing is, in the long run effort, attitude and persistence will always win over talent when those things aren't there.

When we have a talented white belt that is great, but, the unfortunate thing is a lot of talented white belts do not follow through to becoming talented black belts.  And a lot of untalented white belts turn out to be very talented black belts.

Attitude, effort and determination decides who gets to reach  high level of skill, because even the most talented white belt is still a white belt.

Martial arts training is not a sprint, but a marathon and who is ahead at the 1 mile mark doesn't matter as much as who actually finishes the race.  Same as everything in life, effort and persistence will win over the person that got a early lead.

While we will give awards for winning, the awards for attitude  and effort are equally important.  Those are the things that determine long term success.

We can't control our natural talent, we can't control our opponents talents, the only thing we can control is the effort we put in, that's what we should encourage and recognize in kids.

On the surface I suppose it looks like we teach kids how to fight, and indeed I'm sure that's what some people think about the martial arts.

But we do not.

Martial Arts is not about fighting at all, it is a strategy game played with your body.

Fighting implies violence, and violence has no place in a martial arts class, especially one for children.

We teach them to control situations, to control their emotions when they are in stressful situations, to think rationally and problem solve when they are in a bad situation.

We teach them to be confident and act decisively and with intention and planning. We teach them to protect themselves AND their training partners.

But to say a martial arts school teaches fighting is like saying a debate team teaches screaming matches. Fighting has no place in a martial arts school, it is counter productive to all of our goals.

That said we do teach kids how to control a fight, how to protect themselves in that sort of situation. But we do not teach them "to fight".

I did a similar post a while back here

But this is from a slightly different angle.

Something came up in a discussion in class today, and that was that things are less safe nowadays then they where 20 years ago.  This is a belief a lot of people have... except it's completely false.

Crime stats have been on a steady decline for over 2 decades now, and a pretty steep one at that.

We've seen entire campaigns around "Stranger Danger", yet stranger abductions are extremely rare. "Police statistics show 25 children of the 46,718 reported missing in 2011 listed as "abducted by stranger."  More people get hit by lightning in a year then abducted by strangers...

So what gives?

The big difference isn't that crime has gone up, but our awareness of it has gone up.

Thanks to social media when an event happens it spreads fast and far.  What would have once generated a single article in a paper can now generate thousands and thousands of shares, likes, reposts and get people more emotionally involved then before.

It's hard to say whether or not it is a good thing or a bad thing, as the ability of stories to go viral and spread fast has resulted in people being found and saved.  But it can skew our perspective on the frequency of these events.

So here is my challenge, let's make a effort to share the good things as well.  Negative and fear inducing stories spread far faster then stories of a positive nature.  Balance it out, let's celebrate the > 99% of people that are good people, doing good things.

We are the safest we have been in half a century.  We are more connected to people then ever before.  We have access to more information then ever before.

Let's spread help and positive messages, not just the negative and fear based ones :)

We are a martial arts school, and in this industry there is definitely debate about the place of fitness within a martial arts class.

Pretty much every martial arts school advertises it, but not all are going to deliver. Of course some that do send everyone home barely breaking a sweat...

Anyways, fitness in our opinion needs to be a part of what we do. Martial arts at its core is health and self-defence. Both of which are greatly impacted by fitness.

Being in good shape lets you train harder, keeps you healthier and greatly reduces the risk of injury. Any sport that doesn't incorporate fitness into training it's athletes is going to have mediocre performance and best, along with a increased injury rate.

Traditionally fitness in the martial arts was pretty simple and crude. Pushups, sit-ups and squats... pretty standard fair for the time period that martial arts really started growing in North America. The trouble is our understanding of fitness training has evolved greatly since then, and while coaches in a lot of other sports generally receive training in fitness aspects as well martial arts has had a "traditional" leaning that left it less receptive to change.

It's not enough that a work out is hard, making a workout hard is easy. It needs to serve a bigger function and get a result.

The truth is the fitness industry has made massive advancements in recent years, and this can be of great benefit to the martial arts.

We've spent a lot of time (and a lot of money) working with and learning from some of the top strength and conditioning coaches in the world to develop our fitness component, and we are very proud of the results it gets for our members :)

At first glance you might wonder why we do all the events we do for kids.  Such as our "Parent's Night" events, Saturday evening parties from 6:30-10:30pm.

Part of any activity, for kids and adults is the social aspect.  Making new friends, having fun and socializing.

One of the key things in building confidence and anti-bullying is having more then one "circle" when it comes to friends.

Adults tend to make there own events, going out for a bite after work or a class, office parties, etc.  Kids need social events tied to their activities as well in order to build friendships, meet new people and gain confidence when it comes to group environment.

At school they have regular "parties", they have recess, lunch break, etc.  Lots of opportunities to engage in with other children.

Evening classes should be no different.  While getting in shape, learning martial arts and getting all the benefits that come from the classes is very important, making friends and playing is as well.

That, plus they are a lot of fun :)