Our Lil’ Dragons program was designed by industry leading martial artists and child psychologists to ensure your child is developing and learning significant life skills at a young and impressionable age to better prepare them for the life road ahead.
The Main Focus is Focus.
When we teach a child how to focus in the classroom while learning martial arts, they are not just learning how to focus in a martial arts setting, they are learning how to focus everywhere. Once a child learns how to focus properly, this focus can then be applied to other aspects of their life, whether it be their home life, school life or extra curricular.
We teach the “Five Things of Focus.” I focus with my mind (by concentrating on what I am doing and what I already know), I focus with my body (by keeping it still), I focus with my eyes (by watching who is talking to me and what I am doing), I focus with my ears (by listening to the person speaking to me), and I don’t use my mouth (because we can’t talk and listen at the same time).
You will often hear the instructors call attention to the students or ask them to lock it up, prompting the children to either stand strong facing forward or to sit with legs crossed, hands on knees, back straight and eyes forward on instructor. These are anchoring tools. It is very common for a child to lose focus and start daydreaming, these anchoring tools bring them back into the present moment so they can resume focusing on the task at hand.
Why Twice a Week?
We use a “Word of the Week” system. Each week is dedicated to the learning and developing of different life skills, taught as the word of the week. We teach these life skills through martial arts training. For example; on Coordination week we practice learning and understanding our lefts and rights. A great way to do this is to practice punching or kicking with either your left or right side and your instructor would call out which side to use and correct you where necessary.
This gives a mental workout by having to know which hand or foot to use and a physical workout by performing the kick or punch. Creating a strong mind body connection is a major goal of martial arts training.
So why train twice a week? The first class of the week is intended to introduce the child to the concept of the word of week. The second class of the week helps drill the word into their physiology and allows it to become a part of them. This is a tried, tested, and true method and we have seen amazing results from our students over the years.
Many of our Black Belt students began their journeys as Lil' Dragons to then move into our junior program and progress through the belt rankings and achieve their Black Belts. Some have even gone on to become instructors! We believe in building a stronger community one student at a time and Lil Dragons provides the building blocks to do so.
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