“Martial Arts will improve the discipline and confidence of your child”

You’ve prob­a­bly read that a thou­sand times, maybe even seen the sev­er­al stud­ies that give strong evi­dence for it. At this point it’s just accept­ed wis­dom when talk­ing about mar­tial arts for children.

We don’t want to knock that view too hard, but in truth we believe the ben­e­fits of mar­tial arts for chil­dren are some­thing far more valu­able and intan­gi­ble than a sim­ple “stat boost” in their dis­ci­pline and con­fi­dence. It shouldn’t be like you’re mere­ly lev­el­ling up a video game character. 

Don’t get us wrong, increased con­fi­dence and dis­ci­pline are absolute­ly valid and true ben­e­fits. How­ev­er, they are mere­ly an eas­i­ly-pack­aged-and-sold, sim­ple-to-explain frac­tion of a child’s true expe­ri­ence. It’s not sim­ply about build­ing skill, dis­ci­pline and con­fi­dence, but HOW you do it, and what mem­o­ries the process cre­ates: The nerves and thrill of their first com­pe­ti­tion, the glee of get­ting a move they’ve been work­ing on to final­ly work, the cama­raderie and friend­ship formed amongst team mates along the way, or maybe sim­ply build­ing up the con­fi­dence to join in with class for the first time ever.

These are the things that we real­ly get excit­ed about at Kaizen, not sim­ply skills and dis­ci­pline, but the range of expe­ri­ences that we seek to pro­vide, no mat­ter whether a child wants to one day be a world beat­ing MMA cham­pi­on, gain a con­fi­dence boost in the face of adver­si­ty, or just have a fun and healthy hobby!

Our coach­es are all suc­cess­ful ath­letes in MMA, Brazil­ian Jiu Jit­su and Kick­box­ing. We under­stand the grind and dri­ve that suc­cess in these fields requires at the com­pet­i­tive lev­el. How­ev­er, we also under­stand that everyone’s jour­ney is dif­fer­ent, and that hav­ing an envi­ron­ment where every­one can be com­fort­able and thrive will be a much more fer­tile ground for pas­sion and suc­cess in mar­tial arts (and life) than putting every­one through the same ringer, false­ly assum­ing the same start­ing point and goals.

We will also be plan­ning events with our sis­ter gym Scram­ble Acad­e­my Leeds!

To book a FREE first class, mes­sage us, or sim­ply fill out your name, email and child’s age below and we’ll get in touch!