This is great, but be wary of your son doing too much muscle building when he is so young. I have heard from several sources that it may stunt growth. Never seen anything conclusive, but I have never looked for anything either.
When I did a coaching program for Judo (NCCP Level I, to be exact), I was taught to never allow pre-pubescent children to do strength training. Callisthenics are okay, because the resistence is limited by the child's body weight, but weightlifting of any kind is not. Something about building up too much muscle around the joints, leading to arthritis later on.
EDIT: I just went looking for sources for this, and I cannot find any. Unless someone has better Google-fu than me, take what I said above as an extremely suspect anecdote. It seems that the major risks are that coaches will push children too hard, causing damage to muscles, tendons and so on.
It comes from some study in the 60s or 70s showing that Chinese peasant children who were malnourished and had to carry heavy loads, e.g. water buckets, had stunted growth.
The key there is malnourishment.
Somehow this morphed into the meme that "lifting weights stunts growth!" This was debunked in articles in Muscle & Fitness, for one; I don't have the issues anymore, but on the flip side, the fact that NOBODY has a reference for "stunted growth" should be rather telling.
In fact, there is not even a proposed mechanism whereby muscular loads would close bone growth plates. Even female gymnasts, who come pretty close to the textbook definition of being malnourished and overworked, usually grow too big to continue. For the most part only the genetically teensy stay small enough long enough to make it.
Muscular workloads do not close growth plates. It doesn't matter if you are lifting "heavy" or "light". The key is whether you have adequate nutrition BEFORE the window closes on your longitudinal growth, so that during your "growth spurts" there is enough material there to incorporate into new growth.
In fact, strenuous exercise spikes HGH, and combined with the increase in appetite, would likely produce MORE growth (assuming plenty of food) than seen in sedentary children.
MMA has ruined america. There are more "tough guys" walking around now it seems with everyone so quick to want to fight. Like an advanced civilization taking a step back to more primitive ways. Now instead of team sports and learning that the whole is greater than the parts, we have 7 year olds with muscles and ego. And if you don't like it.. want to fight?
This is one area where learning a martial art with more of a philosophy behind it might be more beneficial than just training technique at a McDojo.
In a good martial arts school you will learn how to discipline the mind, and not just the body. In a good school you'll learn to avoid fights as much as learn to win fights. In a good school you will learn to control your ego.
Also, I would add that I think a person's willingness to pick fights has more to do with the kind of environment they grew up in, their peers, parents, and role models, than it does with whether they had MMA training.
I'm fine with kids studying martial arts, but the current fashion for MMA perplexes me...I suppose it's the all you can eat buffet of martial arts. Oh well, plenty of time to specialize later.
I think the current popularity of MMA has to do with two things:
1 - the broadcast of competitions like the UFC
2 - the recognition that no one martial art is superior to the rest, so it's essential to cross-train in a variety of martial arts to be maximally effective
Martial arts taught me quite the opposite. Fighting is difficult and dangerous and the outcome is far from certain, regardless of the level of experience. Its not like a Jackie Chan movie. You opponents don't wait in line for you to get around to them and one hit to the head with a hard object can be fatal.
I'd submit to you the opposite. Less TV and more martial arts training would make people much less eager to start a fight.
Really not a good comparison. a) the culture is so much different - a lot of acting for the good of the group rather than the individual, and b) there really aren't _that_ many people who study martial arts.
There's an old saying - the world's best swordsman isn't afraid of the second best, he's afraid of the worst, because he can't predict what the silly SOB will do next. A serious martial artist will avoid fighting when there is no need, because in a fight your opponent is trying just as hard as you are to win and Murphy's law is always waiting. No matter how uneven the fight looks their is NO guarantee, and losing a fight REALLY hurts.
MMA has "ruined America"? Please, save us the hyperbole.
I stepped into an MMA gym a year ago, it's the best thing I have ever done for myself. It has strengthened my mind and body in ways that would have never occurred otherwise in my life of sitting in front of computers. And it is much better for my brain chemistry than gorging on passive media.
And no, I'm not particularly eager to start fights. But being confident in myself means that I'm not the target of the kind of guys that start fights. The people who know martial arts and start fights are the people that started fights before they knew martial arts.
You know, most Jiu Jitsu gyms in your area would give you a free week or month of lessons, if you wanted to develop a first-hand opinion on the issue. But be warned: it might change your life.
"MMA has ruined america. There are more "tough guys" walking around now it seems with everyone so quick to want to fight."
[citation needed]
If there's been some sort of epidemic of fist fighting breaking out all across America, I sure haven't seen it in the news. I suspect this is more an ideology you have that leads you to the emotional conclusion that this is outcome, not a logical one.
The most useful things I learned from martial arts was how to fall without damaging my self and how to restrain drunk people without using pain or causing damage.
The value of martial arts training for parents and for kids is that it distills the value of respect into kids. Everything from "Yes, sir" to thanking your parents after each class.
When it comes to fighting, the thousands of repetitions of self-defense moves should and could help in a situation where you don't have time to think about fighting. For example, one of my fellow classmates was walking down a street in Kingston, Jamaica and a guy grabbed his arm and he quickly and automatically broke the hold and put the guy in what is like a police hold.
An even better effect is that it might instill some respect into the parents as well (writing from Canada, in case you have never seen the way hockey parents behave before).
34 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 84.8 ms ] threadEDIT: I just went looking for sources for this, and I cannot find any. Unless someone has better Google-fu than me, take what I said above as an extremely suspect anecdote. It seems that the major risks are that coaches will push children too hard, causing damage to muscles, tendons and so on.
It comes from some study in the 60s or 70s showing that Chinese peasant children who were malnourished and had to carry heavy loads, e.g. water buckets, had stunted growth.
The key there is malnourishment.
Somehow this morphed into the meme that "lifting weights stunts growth!" This was debunked in articles in Muscle & Fitness, for one; I don't have the issues anymore, but on the flip side, the fact that NOBODY has a reference for "stunted growth" should be rather telling.
In fact, there is not even a proposed mechanism whereby muscular loads would close bone growth plates. Even female gymnasts, who come pretty close to the textbook definition of being malnourished and overworked, usually grow too big to continue. For the most part only the genetically teensy stay small enough long enough to make it.
Muscular workloads do not close growth plates. It doesn't matter if you are lifting "heavy" or "light". The key is whether you have adequate nutrition BEFORE the window closes on your longitudinal growth, so that during your "growth spurts" there is enough material there to incorporate into new growth.
In fact, strenuous exercise spikes HGH, and combined with the increase in appetite, would likely produce MORE growth (assuming plenty of food) than seen in sedentary children.
I hope you don't seriously consider push-ups depicted on the picture below to be "near perfect form"...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttk8RdiIHzA
MMA has ruined america. There are more "tough guys" walking around now it seems with everyone so quick to want to fight. Like an advanced civilization taking a step back to more primitive ways. Now instead of team sports and learning that the whole is greater than the parts, we have 7 year olds with muscles and ego. And if you don't like it.. want to fight?
In a good martial arts school you will learn how to discipline the mind, and not just the body. In a good school you'll learn to avoid fights as much as learn to win fights. In a good school you will learn to control your ego.
Also, I would add that I think a person's willingness to pick fights has more to do with the kind of environment they grew up in, their peers, parents, and role models, than it does with whether they had MMA training.
1 - the broadcast of competitions like the UFC
2 - the recognition that no one martial art is superior to the rest, so it's essential to cross-train in a variety of martial arts to be maximally effective
I'd submit to you the opposite. Less TV and more martial arts training would make people much less eager to start a fight.
I stepped into an MMA gym a year ago, it's the best thing I have ever done for myself. It has strengthened my mind and body in ways that would have never occurred otherwise in my life of sitting in front of computers. And it is much better for my brain chemistry than gorging on passive media.
And no, I'm not particularly eager to start fights. But being confident in myself means that I'm not the target of the kind of guys that start fights. The people who know martial arts and start fights are the people that started fights before they knew martial arts.
You know, most Jiu Jitsu gyms in your area would give you a free week or month of lessons, if you wanted to develop a first-hand opinion on the issue. But be warned: it might change your life.
[citation needed]
If there's been some sort of epidemic of fist fighting breaking out all across America, I sure haven't seen it in the news. I suspect this is more an ideology you have that leads you to the emotional conclusion that this is outcome, not a logical one.
There is no logical sense in learning a system of violence (defensive or otherwise) to improve your body and mind.
Goal Setting - I'm gonna paddle this board through this beach break like a dolphin
Persistence - Opps, it just dumped me on the beach - try again
Confidence - Cool, I made it to the line up
Nutrition - I eat a Paleolithic hunter/gatherer diet. No carbs, no dairy. Food my body was designed for.
Physical Fitness - Paddle, swim
Frustration Tolerance - Repetition, learning, fun
Focused Attention - All I can think about is this wave
Sportsmanship - It's a big ocean, go for it buddy
Who's the best surfer? the one having the most fun.
And BTW, yes I've done my share of martial arts training. If what you really want is to learn how to kick ass, go here: www.russianmartialart.com
/me sidesteps long involved off-topic discussion about fighting
>> There is no logical sense in learning a system of violence (defensive or otherwise) to improve your body and mind.
There is no logical sense NOT to learn a system of violence (defensive or otherwise) to improve your body and mind.
What you do doesn't matter, as long as it is fun and good for health. (Be careful about e.g. blows to the head and damage to joints.)
In my experience, it depends more on the teachers than exactly what you're learning.
Judo, right?
When it comes to fighting, the thousands of repetitions of self-defense moves should and could help in a situation where you don't have time to think about fighting. For example, one of my fellow classmates was walking down a street in Kingston, Jamaica and a guy grabbed his arm and he quickly and automatically broke the hold and put the guy in what is like a police hold.