The Home Dojo

We’ve talked about a young persons community in school and in their clubs/activities and peer groups, it’s now time to talk about their home community, or what we like to call “The Home Dojo”. The Dojo is a place of respect, courtesy, community and self development. We refer to our students homes as the “Home Dojo” as we want our students to understand that the lessons learnt in the dojo are brought home. It’s the application of these lessons at home that make the biggest impact.
In our Modern Problems section we touched on the many different elements in parents lives now days that increase stress (from many angles). We discovered that there are more distractions, a higher workload and less time is spent with children than previously.
100% of parents said they saw a visible increase in their child’s happiness since going through our Warrior Method Programme.
90% of parents have said that their stress levels at home have been drastically reduced due to their child’s improved behaviour, increased happiness and their increased peace of mind that their child is less likely to be bullied and has a higher confidence.
These are some statistics from our 2017 Warrior Academy Survey where we asked over 1000 parents about the effect our Warrior Method Programme had on them, their children and their family. We were astounded to see in our results the impact our programme had on the home life of our Warrior families.
In another survey through The Warrior Academy in 2017, 80% of parents attributed the biggest stress factor  of their lives, their highest priority and what was on their mind the most was the happiness of their child.
With 100% of our students increasing their happiness we had targeted this main pain point for parents and directly reduced their stress. Interestingly, the second most touched on pain point or “area to improve” for parents was not having enough time with their children (70%!). By improving their child’s emotional IQ, developing their sense of self worth and increasing their behaviour and happiness, less time is spent disciplining or arguing at home and more time is enjoyed in a positive way which I believe improves the relationships from parent to child but also between siblings and goes a long way to achieve the above results.
Exercises at home!
We treat our clubs like families. We plan goals together, treat each other with respect, support each other in difficult times, encourage each other to succeed and celebrate our success and little wins together! We work as closely with our students as we do with their parents and we believe some of the little exericses we do in class can have an excellent carry over to the home life, so here they are!
Joint Discussions – We hold matt chats in class where we talk about a certain value, we encourage our students to participate in this and get their point across. This goes a long way to improving their confidence in discussions, leading, putting forward their opinions and thinking creatively.
Set Goals Together – We sit down and set goals for the year, the term and the month and in many cases the class. By doing this together the progress we make is tangible and we are all more motivated. Check out our goal setting chapter later in this book for our official Warrior Academy Goal Setting system!
Encourage Daily Habits – Creating a small set of daily habits that we perform each day can have a profound effect on our students mindset for the rest of the day. Check out our daily habits in the goal setting part of this book and see if you can implement this at home.
Openly talk about challenges – In class we ask students to talk about what they are finding difficult. This helps other students relate as they may have similar problems. By sharing our problems we develop a more connected community and a higher level of support. Being open about our strengths and weaknesses is a great way for us all to see our individuality, try out strengths and weaknesses exercise shown later in this book!
Celebrate success together – As a club we always make a BIG deal out of any success. We hold regular award ceremonies in each club after each grading where parents and friends all come together to see their child awarded with their new belt. It’s an important part of being a strong community and for implanting the feeling of pride and reinforcing the success of our students. By doing this at home you can positively impact your child and their goals.
Let’s Wrap it up
The foundation of any good organisation or club should be a positive, supportive community. We’ve discovered that the community a young person surrounds themselves effects their social, cognitive, emotional and physical development  and without a strong community students are less likely to take up challenges.

As the first step of our Warrior Method we place a huge emphasis on developing a ”Black Belt community”. A Black Belt Community improves behaviour, reduces negative peer pressure, provides emotional support and mentoring, help students transition between schools and difficult times and makes them bulletproof to bullying. It’s now vital our young people are regularly inspired in order to see the BIG Picture so that they live fulfilling and compelling lives.
In our next blog we are going to be exploring STEP TWO of the Warrior Method… INSPIRE