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johnzag · 05-09-2004, 11:08 PM

Teaching FMA to kids is a hard one. Its one of those martial arts that doesn't really lend itself to that age group.
From experience though and having talked to many FMA Masters what they tend to do is teach the hand to hand techniques to the children in a watered down fashion. Basically restricting it to striking and self defense. With a focus on footwork and blocking. If you add in all the customary little games you can use for warmups then you should be able to keep the kids interested.
Maybe as they get to about the age of 10 introduce them to sticks and start to let them play around with the simple sinawali's (weaving patterns for double baston). A good one may be single sinawali which is just a high and low combination.
There are a lot of good things you can teach the kids without getting too involved with he more complex aspects of the fiipino arts.

05-09-2004, 11:08 PM	#2 (permalink)
johnzag Registered User Join Date: May 2004 Posts: 59 Groans: 0 Groaned at 0 Times in 0 Posts	Teaching FMA to kids is a hard one. Its one of those martial arts that doesn't really lend itself to that age group. From experience though and having talked to many FMA Masters what they tend to do is teach the hand to hand techniques to the children in a watered down fashion. Basically restricting it to striking and self defense. With a focus on footwork and blocking. If you add in all the customary little games you can use for warmups then you should be able to keep the kids interested. Maybe as they get to about the age of 10 introduce them to sticks and start to let them play around with the simple sinawali's (weaving patterns for double baston). A good one may be single sinawali which is just a high and low combination. There are a lot of good things you can teach the kids without getting too involved with he more complex aspects of the fiipino arts.