Martial Arts, Kids and other Sports

In a recent issue of Newsweek Magazine, several sports were listed as primary causes of emergency room visits among children of specific ages and genders. Basketball, baseball, soccer and football topped the list for all ages and genders, in part because these are seasonal sports, and in part because coaches often train young athletes as if they were olympic athletes. The causes include overuse and weekend warrior syndromes. Overuse is dangerous to growing bodies, causing stress on the same part of the body, which can cause arthritis in adulthood. While overuse is dangerous to growing bodies, so is the trend of a child spending 9 months out of the year watching TV and playing video games and the other three months training hard.

Most experts recommend that young athletes continue training in a completely different sport or sports the rest of the year. One which strengthens and stresses different muscles and ligaments, which allow the young athelete to develop and harden in a balanced manner. There are many good sports for this purpose, assuming the child gets 2-4 days a week of consistant work out. Martial Arts, and especially Tae Kwon Do is an ideal year round work out for developing bodies. At Coquille Martial Arts, we begin each class with a brief warm up and then stretching, before moving into more physically challenging exercises. The weekly workout acts as a form of interval training as we move from the aerobic punches, kicks and blocks drill one day, with forms and self defense on another, and sparring(for the slightly more advanced students on the third).

And when your child has other sports commitments, we will work with you in order to maintain this valuable workout on a year round basis. If we cannot schedule your child an alternate TKD schedule, you can give us 30 day notice prior to taking a leave from Martial Arts. Then after the sport we can start back up where we left off, with no penalty to you.

Benefits of Martial Arts

Martial Arts build strength and balance, as well as good training habits, which will help your young athlete prevent sports injuries from their other interests. In addition, we teach safe falling and rolling techniques, which also contribute to a reduction in accidents that result in injury.

If you have any questions, please feel free to call us or email us(link below), 541-396-5576 or coquille.tkd@gmail.com

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