…as title!

My girl needs to let of some steam so were thinking a martial art will let her do this and teach her some control as well.

I know little about the details of martial arts so any help would be appreciated.

Ta

mine does tae kwon do… but is only just 5yrs old been doing for a year or so now and loves it, would like him to shift onto ju jitsu when he is old enough.
TKD is good at channelling energy and instilling discipline and respect (well my club is anyway) but any martial art taught well can only be a good thing. find a decent club would be my advice.

without knowing the kid it’s too hard to say..

there’s gotta be absolutely loads of information on the subject to read online and let her make up her own mind.

What martial art for an 8 year old girl!.

just about any will do. They tend to be quite fast but can’t get much weight behind their punches. A decent kick to the gut usually stops them long enough for you to get away.

there are loads but a majority will not take young children, the most popular ones take young children and they are TKD, Karate and Judo. All 3 of these have pros and cons in my opinion but will all serve the purpose of helping her to learn control.

TKD is good… kick boxing, Aikido, judo, kung fu, shotokan karate,
theres a few to look into !

Send her to your local Judo club. Find one here – http://www.britishjudo.org.uk/thesport/findclub.php

I’ve done many martial arts, and I think Judo is by far the best one for any child to take part in.
Judo in the UK is very well organised, with well developed coaching programmes, so you are virtually guaranteed a good level of coaching wherever you go.

My nipper goes to kickboxing. The local club is run by an ex British champion and the classes are really good. Not cheap but keeps her ocupied for a couple of hours.

I don’t think any aikido dojo will take children – it relies on joint locks which are thought to be harmful to growing bodies. If aikido’s philosophy appeals, judo would be the martial art to learn as a child.

markie : thye do take children:
Aikido
Aikido is a traditional Japanese discipline that seeks to provide self defence by using an attacker’s movements against him/her. Translated as “way of harmony,” this martial art places great emphasis on motions such as pushing and throwing attackers away. Though aikido is the martial art least focused on competitions, if your child shows an interest in learning more about aikido, the British Aikido Association is a good starting point.

http://www.growingkids.co.uk/MartialArts.html

My aikido dojo teaches children. Obviously the locks are not applied. It teaches principles such as moving an opponent and taking their balance.

However, what’s much more important that what art, is what school. Find a school that teaches the kids the discipline you want them to learn. Go try a few out. If kids outside are play fighting, it might not be the best place. They need to learn that it’s for the mats only. Where about are you?

I do Taekwon-do and I’d really reccomend it for the young one. There’s a fair few at our club (starting from age 4 in the little Puma’s!) and they’ll actually spar (ok, it’s points, not heavy) with anoyone upto myself, a 6′ black belt bloke. Plus, they’ll be leathal in 10 years time (search “Natalie McColl” on you tube, a girl from my club) I know there’s a lot about TKD not being a good fighting art, but you’ll not be worrying too much about that and it’s also wrong, it’s not a good ring style, but street very different!
Having said that, most are going to be OK, but is she going to want to grapple with people or learn striking techniques? That’ll point you in the right direction.
Where abouts are you? might be able to give some pointers

Judo as it is a defensive sport – not so likely to get done for using it if needed. Also good training for falling off the mountain bike..

Attended a seminar on wellbeing and mental health last week, in which the tutor suggested that those martial arts involving grappling with opponents seemed to have happier and more confident members than those which were mainly about kicks and punches. Not sure about the reality of this but he seemed pretty convinced.

Other thing he suggested which had more resonance for me was to choose one which actually reflects what your daughter wants to do. It has to be fun and interesting to kids, and adults too or the learning becomes tedious. Watch a class and see how happy, warm and inviting the class is, teacher and students.

Aikido used to be 18+ when I was into martial arts. My sisters really enjoyed judo at that age but may dad wanted more of a defensive sport rather than karate which he saw as a possible opposite. Only had those two choices though at that age.

I did judo as a kid and it was great – and as said above the falling well stays with you all your life

Wing Chung

+1 Wing Chung. I did it in the 80s and everybody had fun

karate IMO. Teaches good self control, she won’t get smacked about too much, and it’s very useful on the street if she needs to use it. As mentioned before, choosing the class / instructor is the most important thing. Our always taught to run away if possible, avoid all confrontation until you can’t. Also we trained using touch sparring which means teaching good self control and avoids injuries.

Judo has the best balance of transferable skills, not only where martial arts are concerned.

Find out whats local, take her along to each one. Most clubs give first lesson free. See which you nad her feel most comfortable with. I tried 5 different martial arts till I found one that really suited me.

Aikido.

No messing mate KRAV MAGA. God help anyone who messes with them once they’ve learnt this.

Krav? Really? Do you honestly think that teaching an 8 year old unarmed combat techniques as taught to Israeli military is a good idea?
Seems like it would be a bit unhealthy to me.

Krav’s focus is 100% on self defence, is it not? I’d argue that teaching self defence techniques to young children is not a great approach.

I’d say Judo myself. Worked well for me and my son (who came second in a regional competition).

yeah but if one day my little girl was standing alone at a train station and a idiot approached she could use natural reflex moves to disable him enough to retreat safely.

The down side I experineced and could never learn due to my nature was to be truly great at it you needed to have a good imagination for violence.

So your probaly right, not a great approach for a kid.

No idea which one to choose, but my daughter went to Karate when she was 8 – the interest lasted about 3 weeks – glad we didn’t buy her the full kit.

She goes to athletics club now, which has held her interest, but she doesn’t like the competitions – she’s used to beating everyone in sight at school, so I think it’s a bit of a shock to find out she isn’t actually the worlds fastest 10yr old.

BTW nobody in this country has a doju. All they can do is teach classes.

If the child will respond, maybe Steinarism is the best way forward. 😀

I have just started karate with the master johnson karate school. The big sell on this was that its a mixed classes so instead of dropping him off and returning later, i can join in. Initially i thought it would be usefull cross training and stretching but i am really loving it. He is also happier knowing i am there and in 2 months hasnt complained or asked not to go. Its now just 1 of the things we do in our week. Great fun, freindly and a bit of good DAD time!
Its our first grading in 3 hours!! 😯

My daughter started karate when she was 5. Sadly she lost interest in it this year and gave it up just the other week. She’s nearly 8

She made it to green belt (with tab) and wasn’t far off the next to be fair.

It was a great sport for her to learn IMO and was great exercise too.

I think for her, the belts took to long to achieve and 3/4 of the way to the next she’d get a bit down. Not wishing to be competitive dad and all that….we tried to encourage her but not this time. Ultimately she liked going up in belts but not the work involved and rarely practiced outside of the karate sessions

I hope she takes it up or something similar up in the future but have already seen the martial arts benefits when she was getting dragged by a boy, from her class, at a party. She properly put him on his bum only for him to get back up and for her to put him away again.

He kept coming back for more and with more aggression (frustration) each time, but it was still “play” fighting and very controlled but he clearly didn’t wish to loose face against a girl. She kept on getting him down and finally was sat on him pummeling his chest until he said he’d give up. She let him up and he attacked again so she pushed him away and held her kick stance and kicked him a few times.

When she started to use her kick on him we thought we’d better bring a halt to the display.

We stopped the fight as we were becoming concerned that our daughter would hurt the poor lad eventually.

Wonderful to watch it was and as the party was at one of those bouncy adventure places, there were a number of parents all watching, amazed at the display. Very controlled and measured violence. Most of the parents congratulated her!

The lad has since taken up karate

This is Lucy posting under Phil’s log in.
I started Shotokan Karate as a 10 year old and kept training for 15 years. It was one of the best things I did as a child to build my confidence and self discipline. We were lucky enough to be taught by Japanese instructors on a regular basis and our instructors regularly travelled to Japan to train. I was lucky enough to go there once too. We were taught to avoid violence and walk away from confrontation. However on a couple of occasions as a teenager in difficult situations I did call on the skills I had learned for self defense.
If you find a club which offers a range of classes and has a good mix of ages, sex and grades this is a good sign.
I would definitely recommend Karate, if not Judo is great for kids as like the others say it is very good for learning to fall.

Try these people for a club in your area. Their website is being updated but all the links work. Hope this helps.

Trampus, any chance you’re willing to expand on that first statement? I always thought dojo meant “a place of the way (to enlightenment)” so anywhere we choose to gather and practice something that might make us better people physically and/or mentally could be called a dojo. One of our instructors is Japanese so I’ve never thought to question him on this but I’m willing to learn if we’re wrong.

My wife only did aikido for about 6 months a good few years back but what she learned about blending with the ground has stayed with her and helped countless times on the bike.

I do not know of any wing chun school that would teach an 8 year old in this country and it is not a style which I would recommend for a child either. TKD or Judo as this is a 8 year old child we are talking about not an adult.

If you’re worried about self-defense judo has got to be a good contender – you are using the other guys weight to do all the work. If some 6ft+ guy tries to push your daughter, she can step aside and guide him down to the ground.

Blocking and counter-punching some 16st gorilla doesn’t sound feasible, however.

Whichever you choose, I’d say go and have a look at the club yourself. If the kids are ignoring the teacher, chucking stuff at each other, punching people in the back of the head when they’re not even fighting them, and generally ignoring the teacher who is pleading with them to stand in a line and trying to bribe them with bright sweets to stand still, etc, look for a different club.

My daughter does tae kwon doe – loves it, if she could do it more times a week she would.

Just to add to turnerguys valid comment above, there is a greater chance of finding a good judo class as its well organised in this country compared to some other martial arts. You can also learn useful stuff fairly quickly. Compare it to aikido which often feels like forgotten art sometimes, it’s harder to find a good school, it takes longer to become proficient but I believe you get more thorough understanding for how to use someone’s strength against them.

Op, is there a self defense requirement here or is it justfor the respect/discipline side of things? Aikido is not something you can learn quickly but it’s the complexity of it that keeps me engaged.

At the risk of sounding like Andy Grey, I’d say none. It’s not natural for girls to fight. Find something more suitable as an outlet for her energy.

kennyp – haha?

Whichever 1 she picks and enjoys. My parents started me when I was 6 for similar reasons, ie to get me out the house and breaking other things instead of theirs.

Try taking her to several classes of different styles if time allow. I started with Karate but got v quickly bored standing in line punching air.

Swapped to Judo and after learning to fall got shown how to throw somebody. Just clicked and I still do it some 30 odd years later. Now I coach seniors but our kid class is always busy and we have a few older ones coming onto the adult mat.

She has to be the one to choose. Most clubs will have some gi to borrow for a few goes till you want to invest (not a lot in Judo).

Whereabouts are you based.

Ha lodrrick is kennyp and I claim my 5 pounds.
As above I would recommend judo. Nowt to do with the fact that I have started it some 25 years ago 😉