Healthy Competition :) Part 2

Life is all about choice!  At ATA Elkton, we teach about the Ladder of Success - which is something I heard later in my life, in college.  As we make good decisions, we climb the ladder of success.  For each bad decision we climb down a rung.  The good thing is that we should always learn from our mistakes.  It's kind of like a "one step backward and two steps forward" kind of deal.  When we make a good decision, it's easy to become lazy.  It's also important to learn from our successes so that they keep happening!  A tournament is an amazing way to immerse one's self in a challenge to learn.  From every win and loss, you can learn something to really make you a true champion.  The only trick is that from every win and loss, you can also make a choice to NOT learn anything.  It can go either way.  The purpose of this section is to help you teach your children a powerful lesson after each tournament, based on their age group.

Today we'll go over skills for kids aged 7-10 years old.  Just so you know, those kids are the ages where they actually begin to "compete."  They go for 1st, 2nd, or 3rd, then there is a 4th place trophy.  I call it the competitor award but many schools are giving out the 1-3 and then giving up to 13 kids a "4th place."  It goes along with the ATA's motto, "every kid is a winner."  To prepare for this, here is what I'd suggest:

If a kid gets a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place trophy, talk about how awesome they did and then maybe ask the kid how they can train over the next few weeks to continue to do this good.  We could keep telling them how when they beat those other kids, those kids became more motivated to train harder and come back next time and try and beat YOU!  Right away (like on the drive home), work with your child to come up with creative ideas that are possible so that they become even better by the next tournament. 

For kids that got the 4th place trophy, those kids need to understand that the 4th place trophy means something important but doesn't mean that they actually won at the tournament.  The fourth place trophy symbolizes the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of ATA kids that are too scared to compete.  The fact that they came out and did something like this - they deserve an award.  It might have seemed easy to them but even Mom and Dad would be scared to try it!  From that point (like on the drive home), work with your child to come up with creative ideas that are possible so that they become better at the next tournament.  Have them set a goal that is specific - "My goal is to get at least a 3rd place trophy at the next tournament since this trophy says 4th.  The next tournament is [PICK A DATE]." 

My passion for the character development in children inspires me to give you this call to action:  Take a stand for the important people in your life that train in martial arts - get them to commit to competing in a tournament to make them better martial artists and stronger people.

*Copyright Josh Hayhurst