Thursday, September 18, 2008

Martial Arts Question

Is it okay to let boys "fight" girls? If it's okay for younger children of opposite gender to fight each other, at what age does it stop being okay? I know that most martial arts studios teach respect for others as a key value, but in competition (which is a long way off for us) your hands, arms and feet actually connect to the other person's body and have physical contact, and of course you want to win so you're going to try to exploit your opponent's weaknesses no matter if your opponent is a boy or a girl. Is this okay? Does the principle of protecting girls that we are trying to teach our boys get lost in there somewhere?
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2 comments:

  1. AmandaSeptember 18, 2008 at 6:38 PM

    Hi,

    You don't know me but I follow your blog. I took karate lessons growing up. To the best of my memory, in competitions boys and girls were separated. In class, sometimes we were separated for sparring and sometimes we fought the opposite gender. I don't know that sparring boys made us feel like we should not be protected by them, but I always dreaded fighting them. With some exception, boys are usually bigger and stronger and they hit harder than girls. After getting hit pretty hard a few times, I began to dread sparring. Not sure how it is at your studio, but in the lower belts we were not allowed to have much physical contact in sparring. After we hit brown belt, it got a lot more physical. Hope this helps!

    -Amanda

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  2. votemomSeptember 18, 2008 at 7:38 PM

    R only sparred boys.

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