How Kickboxing Can Benefit Your Child

Our 7-year old child doing a hook kick on a kick pad

Kickboxing is a holistic sport that offers reams of benefits, both physical and mental for your child! We'll explore some avenues this exciting sport can engage your child.

1. Provides Physical Activity to Lower Obesity Risk and Promote Growth
In a Kickboxing training session, the kids do a variety of exercises. From agility drills to running to mini obstacle courses, each session has something exciting for them to do. Physical Activity can be defined as any form of physical movement which expends energy. Through Physical Activity, kids become more active, allowing them to develop muscles which combats risk of obesity. 

Research shows that exercise provides the necessary mechanical stress for growth and remodelling of the musculoskeletal system (source). Exercise can thus offer more opportunities for your child to grow healthier, bigger and stronger!

2. Build Confidence
In this day and age of digital technology, children are at greater risk of being bullied, both physically and digitally. Such instances of bullying can start from as young as 7. Through Kickboxing, children will build self-confidence by overcoming challenges and watching their techniques improve. Confidence comes from feelings of well-being, acceptance of your body and mind and belief in your own ability, skills and experience (source).

As kids improve on their skills and become more proficient, they gain confidence. Such confidence can be vital building blocks to their overall self-esteem, giving them greater resilience against bullying.

3. Self-Defence
Can Kickboxing be used for self-defence? The answer is both yes and no. 

The Yes: Our Kickboxing syllabus comprises of 11 belt levels, with self-defence elements incorporated into certain levels. Such self-defence techniques can be as simple as 1 movement or a series of complex movements. These techniques were developed by our grandmaster, Brian Beck, who had years of military special forces training in the Special Air Service (SAS), combined with other various martial arts such as Aikido and Hapkido.

The No: The familiar moves we see on television are not usually the best methods for self-defence. For example, punching someone in the face can cause you to fracture your hands (if you're not conditioned) because you've just punched one of the densest bones in a human body. Hence, the familiar moves that we see in kickboxing (punches and kicks) are not the most suited in self-defence situations.

Overall, Kickboxing offers an opportunity for your child to get healthy, build confidence and learn simple self-defence techniques to combat bullying. With belt progression, it provides the necessary stepping stones for your child to gain confidence and stay motivated!

​Where Can I Learn Kickboxing?
Want to try Kickboxing, but don’t know where to go? Come and join us at Active Zone. We are a female-only gym that provides kickboxing based and gym based classes to all ladies at any fitness level. So what are you waiting for? Sign up today for some action and lots of fun! Follow us on our social media pages for more information on the classes we have.