Children have a lot of energy. Why not put it to good use? Sure, you could let them run around outside all day long, and that is a good form of exercise, but it's also unfocused. That's not to say playtime is a bad thing, but children also need to learn valuable life lessons. This is where MMA fighting class can help you as a parent.
It Builds Good Motor Skills
Aside from the cool
MMA Gear that your child gets to wear, the class itself helps your child build good motor skills. Martial arts trains the mind to act automatically to known threats. Blocking becomes second-nature. You can't be everywhere with your child (i.e. when they're at school) and, while you'd like to believe the school will take a zero tolerance approach to bullying, any intervention will be after the fact. By then, your child could be injured both physically and psychologically.
Why allow that to happen to your kid? Coordination is much easier to learn when you're young than when you're older. This is a great time to capitalize on their youth.
It Builds Confidence
Very few sports can help your child develop the kind of confidence MMA can. That's because MMA is a proactive self-defense martial art. Its focus is on making sure your child is well-prepared for anything and anyone that might want to harm him or her.
To accomplish this, your child will have to undergo constant training. That constant training leads to constant achievements both in and out of class. It's the training methodology, the repetitive nature of learning self-defense, that translates over into other activities. Children often associate their accomplishments in MMA with the ability to achieve outside of MMA.
Naturally, this is going to build confidence in all areas of life.
It Instills Discipline
All sports instill discipline - it's the only way to get good at them. But with MMA, discipline is baked right into the culture. Students have to perform with others, display their skills in front of the instructor, and losing is generally not considered an option. It's not so much that there's pressure to win all of the time. It's that the effort itself is seem as the accomplishment - the "win" - if you will. That provides the motivation for your child to become very disciplined about practicing at home.
It's Fun
If MMA became just another chore, your child would get bored with it very quickly. No one likes to have duties imposed on them. But MMA is actually fun. Because the skills learned in class translate into real life, the child is able to connect MMA lessons with his own life. That makes them both personal and meaningful.
For example, a child may learn how to defend himself using verbal commands before any physical defense is necessary. In learning how to do this, your child is implicitly and explicitly learning how to avoid confrontation while still having the confidence to confront an attacker if need be.
Your child's mind is stimulated by thinking about how to solve problems, get creative with deescalation techniques and, if necessary, how to defend himself. All that punching and kicking burns up a lot of energy - something that kids generally find fun anyway.
Mike Ripberger is an MMA instructor. He is passionate about the benefits and skills gained through martial arts.
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