Drills????

[americankarategal]

I am teaching an after-school program for ages 6-16...Does anyone have ideas for some drills I could work them with, they are all at yellow belt right now. [/code]

[monkeygirl]

6-16? In the same group? That's a pretty wide age range, but these drills should work for everybody.

 

You could try teaching them some basic requirements for yellow belt level, such as whatever blocks/kicks/punches, self-defense moves and katas that are required.

 

You could even have them breaking strips of balsa wood for fun...older kids could break 2 to three strips in a stack.

 

Fun drills like dodgeball can be used as teaching tools. Dodgeball teaches kids to stay in a sideways fighting stance, in order to provide a small target. Adding rules and complexity also help: e.g. if someone gets hit with a ball and/or comes out of their fighting stance (other than to pick up or throw a ball), they're "out".

 

We do a drill called Bag Jump, where the big heavy kicking shields are stacked up and kids jump over them, working Plyometrics (leg strength...tell them it works plyometrics at the beginning of the drill, and then quiz them on it later). Start with one bag and then increase it every round. If you run out of kicking shields, take two Wavemaster bag tops off of the stand, stand them up, and add shields from there. Bag Jump is primarily a tall person's drill, so you can try Sudo Stance Limbo.

 

This is where kids go into a Sudo Stance (or your equivalent: a deep fighting stance/horse stance would work), and they have to keep going deeper and deeper. The "limbo pole" can be a bo staff held at each end by a person. Each round it gets lower and lower. This drill teaches kids not to "bounce up" as they advance into a stance. They shouldn't be shuffling forward, rather stepping around, switching sides with each step, like walking while sideways. Then, for fun you can do normal limbo, going backwards, etc.

 

There's tons of fun drills that I could tell you about, I just don't have time to type them all out right now.

[americankarategal]

Thank you I will try all these. They will enjoy them I know. I train with 5 days a week so it gets kinda hard to keep it interesting. Thanks again.