How we run competitions and develop personal goals

 

Martial Arts focuses on the individual. It’s a powerful tool for personal development. As we have mentioned, within Martial Arts a student can set and achieve competitive goals to better themselves without the influence of peers, while being supported by a Community and nurturing the feeling of being “part of a team”.
 
Some excellent examples of personal goals/personal bests and individual competition within Warrior Academy classes are:

– Learning a new pattern or combination.
– Earning my next stripe or belt.
– Increasing the number of reps on a fitness exercise (Press-ups/squat jumps etc)

In Warrior Academy clubs we certainly cater for students who enjoy competing with others and seek to test their skills in a public/competitive environment and in order to help students we have created “In-house” Warrior Academy competitions, specially designed to hold 4 categories of competing (patterns, point stop and continuous sparring, and board breaking). while also splitting students into smaller groups so they have a high chance of building up “small wins” and less of a daunting experience. This method ensures students gain valuable competition experience throughout the day, as opposed to the more typical “sudden death” style of competition that large tournaments are known for.
 
The fundamental goal here is to develop the understanding of important life lessons like Success, Failure and supporting their peers. This does an excellent job of bridging the gap between personal development and public competition.

For students who wish to go on to compete at the elite level, we invite students to National competitions to truly test their skills and mindset.

“Thanks for a fantastic competition today. You create this lovely family atmosphere where the children can try out in a really supportive environment. Joe sets himself very high standards and gets very frustrated with himself but his reaction today was much improved from the last one so this was great to see. Yet again you guys took very good care of him and noticed when he was struggling. He decided not to do the Ultimate Warrior because ,as he said, I am very happy with my performance and don’t want to spoil it by getting upset at the end!! I was really proud of his mature approach and he is now at home watching the videos I took and working out where he could improve.”

“Where he has come from over the last few years is amazing and that has been undoubtedly helped by the great work you guys have done with him and your patient and supportive ethos. I feel very lucky that we found Warrior Academy – it has given him a sporting framework which has really helped him develop and I was also really proud to see him coaching Harley in the weapons comp. Today.” – Rachael Faulkner
 
Support from parents is vital to the development of this kind of Black Belt spirit. PS: Joe is now going on to compete in the English Championships after 2 excellent Warrior competitions and a huge amount of dedication to perfecting his skills.

In the next blog we will be defining failure, a vital step in our understanding of growth!