For this blog, I’m trying out my new commenting system with a topic that I’m hoping will generate a lot of discussion. “Are kids better at karate and martial arts than adults?” So, if you have an opinion after reading this, please leave a comment and if it is working right, you’ll be able to comment on other’s comments.
Before I voice my own opinion, let me highlight some observations that I’ve had with my family and others in the class. Let’s start with injuries. First everyone in our family has injured themselves in some way over the past 9 months in karate class. Who bounced back the quickest? The kids, of course! Below is a chart of who got injured, the injury and recovery time.
|
|
Who? |
Injury |
Recovery Time |
|
1 |
Myself |
Knee |
5 months |
|
2 |
Myself |
Bloody toe |
2 weeks |
|
3 |
Myself |
Bruises from others |
1 week on average |
|
4 |
Myself |
Bruises from myself |
1 week on average |
|
5 |
Husband |
Pulled Groin |
4 months |
|
6 |
Husband |
Bloody and Bruised toe |
1 month |
|
7 |
Husband |
Bruises mostly from others |
1 week on average |
|
8 |
Daughter (oldest) |
Jammed Toe |
3 hours |
|
9 |
Daughter (oldest) |
Bruise on her inner ankle (from snapping out the forms) |
3 seconds |
|
10 |
Daughter (youngest) |
Sore Fist (from breaking boards) |
1 hour |
|
11 |
Daughter (youngest) |
If she’s got bruises from karate, I can’t tell them from others and she doesn’t complain about them |
No clue |
|
Honorable Mention Injury |
|||
|
12? |
Husband |
Fractured Pinky toe (I stepped on it while he was bowing out of class) |
5 weeks |
Of course, recovering from injuries doesn’t mean you’re better at karate, but my husband and I were talking about our injuries one day and how they might effect how we’re doing the karate moves. We debated on whether the injuries caused us to not do the moves fully while injured. There is one exception to this…
Breaking boards seems to be something that as adults we love to do. I think it’s because we can’t break things as that would be irresponsible. Given a choice of spending an hour breaking boards or cleaning the house, I’m certainly going to break all the boards that we’ve got before picking up that broom.
My littlest on the other hand has a hard time breaking a board. I would like to think that she’s too much of a lady and doesn’t want to break anything. (“Keep dreaming, Mom.”) Unfortunately, I think it’s more that she doesn’t understand what force is necessary to break it. Force is something we adults know a lot about, like I knew that I needed to get up a lot of momentum to break through 4 boards with an axe kick. It would have been beautiful too if I had hit the boards with my heel. Instead, to my horror, I saw three boards go flying across the room and looked down and realized I had injury #2. My first thought was, Wow, did you see how far those boards flew? Of course, I was just following my husband’s example who did the exact same thing the week before and how he got injury #6. I even think it was the same axe kick and toe that was injured. Did we stop? No! The next day we were both back at the boards, bloody toes and all. That’s what I call dedication.
As for the forms, it seems that my husband and I are more concerned with the details of where we need to place everything (hands, feet, yells, etc). The kids, well, no offense, but sometimes they remind me of rag dolls. My littlest has even been known to wave at people during a form. Sigh.
Which brings me to my next point, who pays attention better and is more focused in the class? Instructors are constantly interrupted by someone trying to bring up a point. Remember, as students we’re suppose to have questions, not statements. Does this deter the kids? Oh no, they have just gotten smarter about sneaking them in. My youngest went so far as to ask one instructor if he was a Valley Boy. Why you might ask? We were all wondering the same thing, until she blurts out, “Well, my mom is a Valley Girl!” Heaven knows what being a Valley girl has to do with karate, but apparently, she just had to share that with the entire class. I’ve decided that instructors at our school have the patience of saints.
Hands down, kids can do rolling a whole lot better than adults. I must have flunked tumbling when I was a younger kid, because I certainly don’t have any memory of how to do it correctly. The kids would go flying into the roll and come out of it totally unscathed. I would cautiously approach the mat, get down on my knees, place my hands just so, and go WHAAP, Plop, and Ugh. Imagine a square trying to roll, and that would be me. Afterwards, I gingerly pick myself up look closely at the mat because I swear that it magically turned to stone during that roll. I’ve never felt so stiff, then the morning after rolling around on that mat which is why I’ve listed injury #4. And we’re supposed to practice this to prevent injury if we’re in a fight out on the pavement? Pl-e-ase, I’ll give myself a concussion if I attempted it on any surface harder than your average kitchen floor.
So, what’s my opinion on who is better? Kids seem to do the most amazing things with relative ease and more carefree about the mistakes that they make where as adults are definitely more technical, but if they do it wrong, you know about it either through facial expressions or some grunting or snorting noise.
- Wendy Austin
If you want to see how it all began, you can go to the blogs that I wrote while being a White Belt. I've placed them in the order that I wrote them for ease of reading. To see the original comments posted by users, you'll need to go to the actual blogs.
