You're welcome and thanks for the comments. Tez has some good points and great insight to the martial arts which is why I posted here. I will certainly keep them in mind.
Video of my 7 year old rolling at a TKD tourney
- Thread starter Pyrock
- Start date
You're welcome and thanks for the comments. Tez has some good points and great insight to the martial arts which is why I posted here. I will certainly keep them in mind.
Cheers for that!!
Absolutely headguards should be worn for kids standup sparring, we've had leather ones made for the kids with pieces that cover cheekbones and offer very good padding and importantly to our minds they have drawstrings around the top and velcro at the back to ensure a good fit whatever the size of the head. We don't do head shots with the children until they are a lot older but that doesn't mean to say heads don't get caught or even clash. We teach kicks to the head but don't often use them being more influenced by the MT low kicks. we also teach knee and elbow strikes but again these aren't used in sparring between the children.
As I said before we aren't a sports martial arts club, the adults fight full contact MMA and we have a fighter who will be auditioning for TUF next year so you can perhaps see where we come from and perhaps why it seems we are very protective of the children we teach. We don't do points sparring or semi contact but we teach the children realistic martial arts they can use to defend themselves with or if they chose to go on to become fighters. I'm not saying others don't but because we are fighters we tend to be more careful about what the children do, I don't know if that makes sense to you!
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=XX4GC2YbEa8
This is what worries me immensely, it was posted up somewhere else as it was kids fighting and one is KOd. ( yes I know its a good KO but it's still kids!) In MMA you have to be 16 at least before you can fight semi pro rules which is head shots only standing not on the floor. MMA. Promoters here are being very careful any junior bouts we put on so that the perception isn't that we are letting children fight full contact, the matches are very carefuly referred so we get no injuries however here is a young person being knocked out which is something nobody should want to see.
Absolutely headguards should be worn for kids standup sparring, we've had leather ones made for the kids with pieces that cover cheekbones and offer very good padding and importantly to our minds they have drawstrings around the top and velcro at the back to ensure a good fit whatever the size of the head. We don't do head shots with the children until they are a lot older but that doesn't mean to say heads don't get caught or even clash. We teach kicks to the head but don't often use them being more influenced by the MT low kicks. we also teach knee and elbow strikes but again these aren't used in sparring between the children.
As I said before we aren't a sports martial arts club, the adults fight full contact MMA and we have a fighter who will be auditioning for TUF next year so you can perhaps see where we come from and perhaps why it seems we are very protective of the children we teach. We don't do points sparring or semi contact but we teach the children realistic martial arts they can use to defend themselves with or if they chose to go on to become fighters. I'm not saying others don't but because we are fighters we tend to be more careful about what the children do, I don't know if that makes sense to you!
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=XX4GC2YbEa8
This is what worries me immensely, it was posted up somewhere else as it was kids fighting and one is KOd. ( yes I know its a good KO but it's still kids!) In MMA you have to be 16 at least before you can fight semi pro rules which is head shots only standing not on the floor. MMA. Promoters here are being very careful any junior bouts we put on so that the perception isn't that we are letting children fight full contact, the matches are very carefuly referred so we get no injuries however here is a young person being knocked out which is something nobody should want to see.
Oh, You're in the UK. I saw a segment somewhere on cable TV about MMA in the UK for children. I have to say that it was disturbing. Just so you know, my sons MA training is NOTHING like that...it's more of a traditional martial arts thing including TKD forms and the like. I can see why you are concerned with children and MMA.
Very few children here train MMA, I know the progamme you mean, it caused a big stir here, it really annoyed us MMAers as it was actually Muay Thai fights in the cage that it was about! it was horrendous. it was about 'baby cagefighters' but as I said it was bloody kickboxing! Talk about pushy parents! One father was going to take his young son to fight pro in Thailand, he was about 9 or so. Our fighters go out to thailand to train and they said young children there do fight but it's out of neccesity for them.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=-OCC74vZ0Kc
Here no children fight MMA at all, they have to be 14 before they can fight amateur rules which is no head shots at all. No promoter ourselves included will take childrens fights.
Gordon Nore
Senior Master
I've seen parents badly behaved at little league, Karate tournaments,and the like. Naively, I thought I had seen the worst of bad parenting. This is the most grotesque thing I have witnessed in children's sports. Where to start...?
- Parents swearing at a kid for getting hit?
- Giving a child the choice not to wear protective head gear?
- Spectators drinking at an event for children?
At least kids in Thailand doing this are feeding their families.
To be honest they probably did the gambing behinds the scenes! I and every other MMAer here found the whole thing disgusting, because the programme was called baby cagefighters we got the blame for it by people who couldn't tell the difference between martial arts. On the MMA forums there was uproar and not a few calls for the parents to get in the cage.
It shows too that the programme has gone beyond the UK and we are still being blamed as you can see from Pyrocks post he thinks we have to be careful with children in MMA because of it.
OK the truth, children in the UK do not compete in MMA. the youngest competitor has to be 14 and compete in amateur rules only, which is no head shots whatsoever. The referees take extra care and will stop a fight sooner than an adult fight if they think there is danger of an injury. Children here compete in BJJ, Judo and karate, TKD etc competitions. I don't know of any MMA club or team that teaches children MMA here. Most children do the disciplines separately then have it joined up when they are older, the youngest we have is a 15 year old and he came to us from boxing. My instructor's sons who are 18 and 16 did TKD first before he would teach them MMA. This is the way it is here. The children we teach in our classes do it separately and spar either standing or on the floor not both. Pyrock's videos has them doing both which is something no one does here, that is far more MMA than we do with children hence my concerns. We teach them TSD (with katas), judo and BJJ, we don't do it for competitions though, they don't want to. We mentioned it and no one was interested so the kids vote had it. We don't consider what we do as a sport. the MMA fighters we have as well as the adults who do MMA but don't compete are also serious about SD partly because of their jobs but partly because we attract serious people. We know all about the stuff that because you do MMA with rules you can't fight in the street, well to put a lie to that all our students adult or child can fight if necessary, thats what we teach frankly. . . fighting. You can call it self defence if it sounds better morally lol!
But the childrens safety when training is the paramount consideration, they are too precious for it to be otherwise.
lklawson
Grandmaster
The subject is getting ink in major publications too. IMS, BB Mag had an article just recently.
Peace favor your sword,
Kirk
As long as they state it's Muay Thai these kids are doing it should be widely publised, I'd go so far as to say I'd like to see it stopped for children.It gives such a bad view of martial arts and quite honestly I don't know why they are doing it in a cage anyway, all the MT shows I go to are rings as I think it specifies in the rules (?). I can't imagine any advantages to being in the cage, thats usually for the grappling part of MMA, stops them rolling out onto the audiences ( not that thats a bad thing, I've had a couple of rather nice chaps land in my lap a couple of times when judging lol)
I really am disgusted by this MT for kids though, I get violent thoughts about the parents!
I saw a video once of some pre-teens(12-13) doing MMA in a cage but it was a very controlled environment. I think it was in a cage mainly because it was predominantly an adult gym. I also saw a couple of 7-8 year olds in a Pankration trouny but the strikes were only to the body. I have to admit though, they looked pretty violant for their age and very few JJ or BJJ moves.
In my sons vids, they are not allowed to strike after the clinch and I have rarely seen any striking at all...at least for the younger kids. I would prefer my son to do straight BJJ. He missed an opportunity last weekend because he had his "BIG" TKD tourny. Hopefully, he will attend the next BJJ tourny and do strickly BJJ without any headgear or gloves.
I really think that my sons TKD school is just trying to mix TKD sparring with JJ and created the event to see if it gains popularity among the students and it seems like it is because the first tourny (second video) there were only 6 participants. In the second tourny (first video) there were at least 12-16 participants. Personally, I hope they just stick to BJJ or tradional JJ and leave the striking to the other event.
In my sons vids, they are not allowed to strike after the clinch and I have rarely seen any striking at all...at least for the younger kids. I would prefer my son to do straight BJJ. He missed an opportunity last weekend because he had his "BIG" TKD tourny. Hopefully, he will attend the next BJJ tourny and do strickly BJJ without any headgear or gloves.
I really think that my sons TKD school is just trying to mix TKD sparring with JJ and created the event to see if it gains popularity among the students and it seems like it is because the first tourny (second video) there were only 6 participants. In the second tourny (first video) there were at least 12-16 participants. Personally, I hope they just stick to BJJ or tradional JJ and leave the striking to the other event.
I agree with you there, plenty of time to put the two together later if they want. grappling in a cage is much better than in a ring as it's safer, no falling out under the ropes! though I've had some nice moments judging adults MMA when a guy has fallen out onto the table in front of me rofl!!
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