Why It’s Cool to Be a Black Belt Mom
It’s pretty common for families to feel a little strapped for time. With school, work, homework and keeping up with the house, it can feel like your time during the day is more than used up before you even begin considering extracurricular activities.
However, it has been shown that regular exercise can have benefits far beyond just keeping body weight in check. This mean it’s important for kids (and parents) to have an active outlet to both burn some calories and to relieve stress.
With everyone in the family’s busy schedule, it can be a blessing to find an activity that everyone can participate in at the same time, and that everyone can also reap some serious benefits from. One perfect option for the family that wants to get up and get moving as a unit is a Taekwondo Class.
Why Taekwondo Is Great for Families
Despite different ages, activity levels and life experiences, practicing Taekwondo as a family gives everyone a common goal. Siblings, parents and children all get involved in encouraging each other toward perfecting the next technique and achieving the next rank. Rooting for each other as a team really helps to bring a family closer as a cohesive unit.
Secondly, Taekwondo is an excellent form of exercise that builds strength, endurance and flexibility. Children often learn by example from their parents and older siblings – what better way is there to show them how important exercise is to health, than by getting directly involved in a fitness activity that you all perform together?
Participating in Taekwondo also serves as an excellent source of motivation. Seeing siblings and children succeed and excel through hard work will often drive the other members of the family to put in more work, and to practice a little bit harder to keep up with those who are progressing. And there isn’t much better motivation for a child than having their siblings and parents right there with them, cheering them on as they attempt a new skill or test for the rank.
Other Taekwondo Benefits
In addition to keeping your family working together through the class toward specific goals, Taekwondo also provides some powerful individual benefits to students. Taekwondo teaches focus and discipline – two traits that are of critical importance to your child in areas outside of the class. These benefits of Taekwondo will carry over into other important areas of life, and often lead to improvements in performance in school and other individual activities.
Practicing Taekwondo will also teach you and your children valuable self-defense and bullying-prevention skills. Your time in class will teach you hand strikes, kicks and blocks in order to properly deal with a physical encounter. And (maybe even more importantly) Taekwondo will help provide you with the mental and verbal skills you’ll need to diffuse a situation before it has a chance to escalate into a physical encounter.
If you’ve been looking for an activity that will provide you with some much needed regular exercise and an activity that you can spend time enjoying with your kids – why not combine the two, and try out a family oriented Taekwondo class? You’ll save time, have fun, get fit and come away as a closer knit unit while you work toward your martial arts goals!