Adults & The Martial Arts

With all the stress of daily life, more adults can benefit from training in the martial arts but do not do so.  Our instincts as parents are to put our children first before ourselves.  We fail to see the importance of keeping ourselves fit and healthy so we can provide for our familly.  I am often reminded of this when I'm on board a plane.  One of the safety protocols should the cabin pressure drop is to put the oxygen mask first on ourselves, before attending to our children.  The reason behind this is that we need to remain conscious for if we were to blackout because we were attending to our kids first, we would not be able to help our kids furthur.  So it is too with our health!  If we don't keep ourselves fit and healthy, we would not be able to support our family or may not be able to enjoy an active and productive relationship with our children.

So why is it that more parents are not more actively involved with training?  At Ooi's Taekwondo, our "family classes" have seen an increase in parents training together with their children.  Martial arts training offer the opportunity for Parents to be truly actively involved with their kids.  We totally encourage Parent involvement in their child's training even if they are not training themselves.  That is why all our Centers are open concept where Parents literally are sitting right in on the training session.  Of course we also have had to tell a few overzealous Parents to "go have a coffee" when they become a negative asset.  Yes, we have to sometimes "discipline" the Parent as well!

Ideally, we encourage the Parents to join us and train together with their kids.  After all, they are already spending an hour waiting, so why not join in and train together with their kids?!  Many start off as moral support for their kids or "just for excercise", but soon begin to appreciate the benefits of training from how they feel and how much they enjoy the training.  There are times I am surprised to see the parent coming on her/his own without the child because the child was at a birthday party!

I believe that in the West from the 1970's to early 1980's, were the most number of adults training in the Oriental Martial Arts.  This was mainly due to the contribution of Bruce Lee and later Jacky Chan who both always championed what the martial arts stood for and represented; "Honor, Respect, Discipline, Courtesy, Pride, Humility, Duty, Justice, Courage, Strength, Skill, Style, Compassion.... They both always included all these values in their movies and for this they have my respects.  It was a time where it was proud to say "I train in the Martial Arts" and people respected you.  Today it is quite a different story altogether. (See my article on MMA vrs Martial Arts). Go to most martial arts centers today and you see mostly kids training.  I aim to change that.  We are getting more adults and I want to see even more as I believe I can offer good traditional training which teaches the realities of self defense as well as give you a healthier and more active lifestyle.  We are not MMA nor do I want to be MMA, but we will expose our students to the advantages of MMA technics of close range and ground fighting.  Let's face it, how many of us can afford to go to work with a broken nose, black eye or cauliflower ears!