To teach children

[The_student]

I wonder if anyone has experience to teach FMA to small children (5-7) years, not for school but like privat.

I have some questions;

1. should I use a ordinary stick (65) cm, or should I make a stick which fit the child? If I make a stick that fit the child I suppose it would be better, or?

2. This particular child (5 years) seems to like sticks better than empty handed, how should I introduce empty handed? Yes, I know play with the child, but any special exercises?

Anything else that you guys could help with and I would be very grateful,

Thanks!

[johnzag]

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.

[Bethany]

I am the assistant instructor in our MA school and we actually do teach young children FMA. I really can't claim to be an expert, but I do have exerience in the matter. You asked about the sizes of sticks.. In my opinion (just opinion, not fact) I think it is good to train them with the actual standard size of the weapon. It can be a bit odd at first, but they quickly get used to it. Then they don't get used to training with a smaller size and then have to transition to a bigger size later, and then have to get used to that. Also, we use Action Flex a lot, which really helps. You talked about training in empty hand as well. We teach our children mixed martial arts many times and talk about how many of the movments are a lot alike. We teach them to use the same footwork for weapons as well as empty hand. I don't know if this helps, but it seems to work with our kids.
Bethany

[tekshow]

^^^ what's Action Flex?


I also teach a youth program at my school. Mostly for the 5-7 year olds we teach them empty handed and BJJ... if they are advanced, respectul, and their parents okay it, then i'll let them work with the sticks a bit. We too give them the same standard size stick and they get comfortable with holding it nearly immediately. It's more the trajectory of the strike that confuses them. We just build one piece at a time.

empty hand imho is a lot easier if they've gotten used to training with weapons. One way i do it is to show a stick disarm and then do the same disarm without the stick. That way they get used to the principle of going against the opponents thumb for instance with any object....

some kids are ready for it other are not. One kid kept bugging me about doing sticks or nunchakus over and over again and i finally rewarded him once with a private lesson for something and he of course chose to do stick work. After about a half hour of sweating, learning one through five lameco style and doing some disarms he looked up at me and smiled questioning "so when do we get to pretened we're ninja turtles?" he just didn't graps that it was work and not what you see on TV. just make it fun and safe and i'm sure they'll have a good time.


good luck,
joe

[Bethany]

Action Flex has done wonders for out training so far. It is usually used for sparring. It's soft so it really doesn't hurt as much but it is pretty near the same weight as a normal stick and isn't too soft so as to bend all the time. I find it's a great thing to start with especialy for kids. The only thing is, is that since it really doesn't hurt, we have to really remind them that they still need to respect it as a weapon. But, for me, it works wonders with teaching.

[Kirves]

I have taught some simple things to a couple of kids. Here are my thoughts (I'm no expert on anything related to FMA or teaching):

- I only showed them weapon stuff, keeping it abstract and away from something they could use to bully or show off in school or similar environment

- I kept it all playful. I didn't "teach them martial arts". I merely "showed them stick- and swordfencing as seen in pirate and Robin Hood movies". It was easy to introduce some basics to them after first showing a pirate or Robin Hood movie to them, they were all wired up for some fencing-type work - er, play that is. I just showed them a couple of simple and relatively safe drills and they were thrilled with them.

- I kept it all playful. Short sessions. Tied the sessions to movies or other similar inspirational situations.

[tekshow]

by the way thought i'd iterate that i was reading some stuff about Maestro Ted Lucay Lucay the other day and he mentioned when he was younger he did start with a smaller stick. I think he was like 3 though

His next door neighbor and good friend of the family was Grandmaster Villabrille(sp)



now that'd be a block to live on!




sounds like you did good in your lessons. as long as you have an attitude of respect and let them know it is indeed a weapon i think it'll come through. have fun with it! sounds like you are.


peace.
joe