Have you ever wondered why the Center’s classes are designed to be either 30, 45, or 60 minutes in length? After tedious research and over 25+ years of experience teaching martial arts to student’s of all ages, the instructors at the Center have found that lengthy workout times do not always mean extra knowledge.

Medical research backs the fact that students training in martial arts, which require fine motor skills and complex movements of the whole body, need between 30 minutes to 60 minutes to train on new skills. To adequately retain these skills, students must experience at least a 6 hour lapse in time and then come back to repeat the same sequence again. Martial Arts not only involves learning new skills like self-defense technique, or Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu submission moves, it also requires strength and conditioning training. Just like weight lifters must rest their bodies between workouts to increase strength upon their next strength training session, so do students of the martial arts. Because the body is in a process of repair after a workout, there must be a period of rest between workouts. A decrease in strength and conditioning occurs when the muscles of the body cannot be repaired after continuous use. Classes with children between ages 3—5 should be kept fast paced and fun. Numerous studies have shown that children in the Early Development stages learn best while having a happy attitude. Also, for every year of age, educators can expect about 1 minute of attention. For karate teachers, this means that any one activity lasting beyond 3 –5 minutes is going to lose the attention of the students in the class. After 20 –30 minutes of training, most students in the 3 –5 year old age range will require a rest. This rest helps the student maintain knowledge, but also keeps the class fun which helps to encourage further learning.

Students in the 6—10 year old and 11—15 year old age range must be kept interested and excited about learning. That is why the instructors constantly repeat the same move over and over, but in a disguised manner. One week students could be learning a kick in the air, the next week they’ll repeat the same kick in a timed contest, the next week they’ll learn how to hit a target with the same move. For the child, he or she does not see the same move repeated, therefore the interest and excitement level required for learning remains.

Unlike children, most adults are reserved when it comes to trying new martial arts techniques or abilities. Adult students, especially those that have started martial arts as an adult, must continually try to learn the art and replace old habits with new ones. Repeating the techniques and logically knowing why the techniques are used helps build confidence to try the techniques full out which causes less mistakes and improper training.

The time old adage “Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect,” is also true for Martial Arts. Students of the arts gain much more accuracy in technique with this philosophy. Practices aren’t about as many repetitions of the technique as possible, but instead are about perfect repetitions of the technique.