At What Age Should Kids Start Martial Arts Classes?
This is a question that we hear so, so often. When should kids start in the martial arts?
The answer is that they should start when they're ready and interested, but also that younger is most definitely better.
Young Minds
Young brains are ripe and ready to learn. Children who start training at an early age learn to form their bodies in the shapes of martial artists. Those forms and movements get into their brains on a deep level, and become intuitive much more fluidly and easily than they will be later as brains get older and more used to other forms and paths.
Integration of martial arts skills from preschool will allow those skills to grow over time. Of course we can learn and grow at any age, but there's just no doubt that for little ones it's easier to do!
Focus
Children are so often without an outlet today. We sit them in desks and expect them to be still and focused for hours and hours per day starting in preschool. For kids as young as four, martial arts can offer an outlet that allows them to be focused while being physical.
They can work through this moving focus that's feeding their drive to get going while helping them to learn those mental clarity techniques that will allow them to be successful in the much more constrained educational environment. The results are that kids learn to cope with the pressures that they face in healthy ways rather than in unhealthy ones.
Martial arts can provide your child with the ability to manage their mind in ways that they won't learn anywhere else, and those benefits are there from the very start of training, only becoming sharper the longer they're learning.
Bottom Line
We at Mastery Martial Arts start kids at4 years old. "There are some rare cases where a 3 year old can handle the class." Younger than that and they're really not ready to learn in a group environment, nor are they equipped with the control of their bodies that's necessary to train.
Far and away most children are ready to begin at this age, and even if they struggle a bit at first, they will quickly find their footing in the training environment. Part of what this all about is that growth from the inability to focus and control the body towards focus and control.
That being said, any age is a great age to begin training in the martial arts! Elementary school aged kids tend to be very enthusiastic about learning martial arts, not to mention the bully prevention that comes with learning these skills. Middle school children and teens build self control and self awareness, and beginning training at this age offers kids the ability to discover something that they can be passionate about.
For adults, martial arts is a fantastic way to push the boundaries of the body and mind, keeping both sharper and more equipped to wrestle with the stresses that life has to offer.
Everyone will find an extraordinary benefit in martial arts training, no matter their age or previous experience!
