HOW & WHY JUDO BENEFITS CHILDREN

GR3G4 wrote:

Ben Reinhardt wrote:

This an issue I take pretty seriously. I don't allow parents to "coach" from the sidelines if they are watching practice. None of them know any Judo anyway, plus, it confuses the kids. They are working on what I've instructed them to work on, and if they need any cues I'll give them.

I've told quite a few parents to please be quiet (politely), then not so politely to be quiet and observe, or leave. So far, nobody has withdrawn their kids from Judo. I think it best for parents to be not present in any case, it's better for the kids to have a break from parental authority/observation. Some kids are OK with their parents there, others train better without them present.

Parents of course have a right to watch their kids practice...a good parent will make sure the person teaching their kids is competent at teaching, not abusive, etc.. I've no problems with that, just the kibitzing I don't tolerate.

Ben

I agree that during practice or competition parents should not be allowed to coach from the sideline. But I also don't let the kids' parents attend practice, excpept in the first few weeks of the season (if a child joins the class later in the season, of course the parent is allowed to watch a few times to get the feeling what is going on and how we work with kids). From time to time I agree for parents to come and watch the practice, usually one or two at a time (they expressed interest in how their kids progress, maybe they want to photo or film their kid during judo practice or an out of town grandma wants to see her grandkid do judo...), and of course parents were allowed to attend all events (competitions, gradings etc.) . The parents were presented with the credentials of the instructors (licence, experience...). Also many came because we were recommended to them by people who had children in our club (the best form of advertising). In most cases there were no problems with them not being allowed to attend practices (I actually can't remember any). We also took time to explain the parents why we believe it's better if they didn't attend practices regularly.

I worked with young children (they started judo at 4-5 years) and found that having parents in the room was disturbing the practice. An instructor has to be the main authority at the practice (I guess everyone will agree) as he/she is responsible for everything that happens during the class. When parents are present (the most important people in a child's life) the instructor can have difficulty creating this authority as the parents will be the the first people a child will look to for questions, praise, help or whatever. Also sometimes parents can't help themselves (even when they agree it's not OK) and need to shout a word to their child (sometimes encouragement, some times they feel the child is not behaving) - in these cases the child can forget about the instructor.

(I can explain these things so much better in my language...)

Hanon wrote:A GENERAL POST ON THE SUBJECT OF GUESTS IN THE DOJO.

Hi,

This is a minefield. Teaching children today is not a risk free activity. IF a dojo has an infant section it would be my strongest advice to INSIST on a parent or guardian being present when teaching. I make this suggestion regardless of the sensei being male or female.

The responsibility of the management and conduct of behaviour ON a tatami belongs, correctly, with the sensei. Once a parent has passed their child onto the sensei the parent must accept that the sensei is now responsible. If a parent cannot accept that then the parent is free to remove their child from your dojo.

NEVER EVER allow a parent to even speak with their child when they enter your tatami. Once on that tatami the child MUST understand that YOU as the teacher is responsible and act on your commands accepting your discipline while growing and developing his or her own.

Mat side teachers give the trots. I have never tolerated them. They are a danger to their children and all those on the tatami.

It is imperative that a child has free time away from parental control just as its vital for a healthy family relationship that parents have free time away from their kids. A tatami should become a small world of its own, when we entre a tatami all external pressures and day to day functions should be left in the changing room. The tatami is a class room, a dangerous one. A sensei HAS to have 100% control of his class. that means 100% attention from those he is responsible for. If a child's mind is diverted away from the artificial 'zone' of a tatami then even for a second, that child can be a danger to themselves or peer.

When I was teaching the tatami became the world for a small period. I knew what was going on on every millimetre of that tatami. I was responsible and responsible IN LAW. This point must be burned into every teachers mind from the word go.

Sure Mr or Mrs Jones may try and speak with their kids. Point is the teacher then losses control of HIS environment and that is when accidents occur. Who then carries the can?

If a parent is allowed to interfere with the lesson the teachers authority becomes eroded and the child is not free from parental control. Double wamy.

So, if your teaching infants I suggest you insist on parents being present but have a flyer printed explaining what is written above. Most parents will respect this and thank you for your hard work with their kids.

If you do allow parental intervention then be prepared to accept the consequences when something goes wrong.

Though it appears so black and white please don't think I feel from a tree yesterday. I understand the practice is not always as simply as the theory, however no one forces a teacher to teach if a teacher finds difficulty with control maybe its best to practice and allow another to accept such a heavy burden?

Mike.

Judo Dad wrote:The paper, Effects of an after school judo program on children's self esteem,byCatt, Margaret Rose (2006) may be of interest. Ihave been unable to uncover similar work in this area and would be glad to hear from others that know of similar work. Below is an abstract:

Effects of an after school judo program on children's self esteem, by Catt, Margaret Rose (2006)
The purpose of this study was to examine changes in children's self esteem as a result of participating in an after school judo program. The research hypothesis was that an increase in children's self esteem would occur after participating in an after-school judo program. Participants for this study were elementary aged school children enrolled in an elementary school within the Warren Township School District in Indianapolis, IN. There were two groups randomly selected for this study: a judo group and a control group (judo group, n=19 control group, n=26). The judo group participated in a 12-week program of instruction in judo, conducted after regular school hours. To measure self esteem, a questionnaire which contained the Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale, was administered to the study groups. Questionnaires were administered to both groups prior to the commencement of the program, and after completion of the program. The findings of this study were that the self esteem of children that participated in the judo instruction showed a decline (p = 0.10). This was in conflict with the expected outcome. The findings suggest that further investigation is needed in order to control for variables that might have had an unintended influence on the outcome, as well as expanding data collection to better explain the results. However, the findings are consistent with other studies of self esteem which show that self esteem is difficult to measure and is weakly related to external variables.

Okazi wrote:Dear Cichorei Kano and Hanon:

You will be relieved to find out that the judo, as it is practiced at my club, is very beneficial to the mental health of all its members. Furthermore, you both will be glad to know that I don’t recoil at the sight of myself in the mirror, because I am a good person. Moving along…

Posted below is an excellent summary of the research out there regarding martial arts and mental health. After reading both of your posts I became upset, and desperately sought a second opinion (http://contemporarypsychotherapy.org/vol-2-no-1/martial-arts-and-mental-health/). We can all now breathe a collective sigh of relief. We western instructors are not animals and the kids are going to be alright. Have a great day!

M

Cichorei Kano wrote:It is once the same as it is so often in judo: popular opinions and wishful thinking completely colliding with reality and science, which is reflective of the anti-intellectualism that has characterized judo for so long, and remains partly responsible why judo turns in circles and why so many problematic issues remain. The Kodokan has done it by the hagiographic approach to Kanô and jûdô and the IJF does it through its propaganda machine. Just recently the EJU held a multiple-day seminar about sociological impact. It was its usual exercise of patting itself on the back. For days it had speakers all lavishly and enthusiastically speaking to all the wonderful things judo supposedly is doing. From a scientific point of view it was shocking, amateuristic, incompetency of the highest level. The 'seminar' was largely characterized by an absence of scientists, and peer-reviewed critical studies, references, objective analysis. It's a propaganda machine, the same propaganda machine that is responsible for each time the IJF has changed its refereeing rules to call them as "improvement that everything is going to be better". No doubt, if the rules of year X made everything so much better, then why were they changed again and again and again. Sure, the sample size of Catt's study may be small, but believe me, her findings are completely in line with numerous studies. Unlike what we all would like to believe the impact of judo on children is ... not positive, but is overall outspokenly negative. In summary, children's judo training (as typically done in the West) generally leads to: increased antisocial behavior, lower self-esteem, increased egocentrism. This is not unique to judo but to most martial arts training in children. Why is this so ? It is a multifactorial proces, but likely it is because there is a heavy emphasis in separating winners from losers, and an emphasis on "being better than". That is also what leads to the misunderstanding. Competing of course can make you stronger and better geared for life, but people forget that there is one condition to this equation, namely ... if you are the person ... who WINS these competitions. The people who continuously lose the competition hardly are better geared for life. What does judo, the national and international federations do ? They bring success stories of the people who made in judo, those few who were winners and great champions. Where are all the stories of the losers, the people who lost again, and again, and again and dropped out, stopped judo, struggled to master anything, failed rank exam after rank exam, etc.? Even the so-called Western reinvention of judo still produces the same negative effects on the development of children. There has been since the early 1980s an emphasis in the West on introducing games in children's judo as the playing would server didactic goals. There is no doubt that in terms of motor skills that is true, but ... what one forgets is that the socio-emotional and psychological effects are the same. Why ? Because most of these plays do exactly the same, they emphasize 'competition' and "being better than". The only studies that have found a shift, and demonstrable positive effect of judo and martial arts is ... surprisingly ... when the competitive element is removed and the emphasis of the instruction becomes entirely traditional values such as respect, caring, consideration for others, realizing each others qualities, etc, and --I realize many of you will ridicule this-- kata. The problem here is that particularly in the way the judo world is constructed, this leads to not-to-the-point arguments IN THIS CONTEXT such as: "Are you claiming that children would become strong fighters by not doing competition and only doing kata, talking about philsophy and practice vanilla judo ?" That is not the context. The context is about the effects on children's socio-emotional and psychological development, not about how many people they are able to 'beat', or how many 'champions' will grow out of them. The differences is obvious as becoming a champion in judo or someone who has the ability to wipe the tatami with half of your dojo is no reflection of that person's socio-emotional an psychological health; almost on the contrary, and you would find actually a greater proportion of sociopathic behavior, egocentrism among judo (or other martial arts) champions than you would find among your average judo club population or the average population.

The idea of an outspoken negative effect of martial arts and judo training obviously is not something that fits well into one's club or federation marketing and strategy, although it would be entirely unfair to suggest that hardworking club members and leaders who do their very best of running a club are intentionally covering up this knowledge. It is not known. The transfer of scientific knowledge in judo to the average judo community is extremely low, and this is no surprise because judo has a strong anti-intellectual sentiment. Judo has always been marketed, certainly in the West as hard practical handwork on the tatami, basically resulting in showing who is the strongest. This is still even very widespread today in the judo community: differences in opinions or discussions or arguments still escalate to a "let's settle this on the tatami and see who is right" or national coaches or performance directors in the end still often are people with little relevant knowledge but people who obtained the highest possible competitive result themselves or who despite their age could likely still wipe the mat with most of the team, basically things that in the end are completely irrelevant.

The transfer from science into judo is worse than in almost any other sport, and national judo teams today don't train much different from how they trained in the 1970s, 40 years ago. The poor transfer of science in judo is seen in judo history and philosophy for the simple reason that most popular books are simply full of nonsense copied from each other, perhaps no surprise because the threshold to get to original or critical knowledge is very high. Becoming fluent in Japanese would only be the start. The transfer of science into judo is poor in physiology and medicine. Findings, serious concerns about potential risks that have been established in the 1990s are still not known among judo federations and top competitors, among these the devastating effects of weight-cycling, particularly in women, and many other facts. The transfer of sciences into judo is poor in terms of coaching science. Lots of judoka lift weights, but the exact impact of different things such as endurance strength, absolute strength, explosive power, still are insufficiently known even among team leaders, and when you watch the training of Olympic level athletes principles of the different types of training ideal for each component are not optimally applied. They all lift weights, but not in the proper regime to optimize each of these effects.

The transfer of science into judo is poor in terms of linguistics, with many concepts still improperly understood in the West. Entire concepts, basic concepts are not known. On the old forum I once gave the arrangement of newaza in Kodokan judo. It was not known. People did not know it. They all knew about katame-waza, but no one was able to provide the arrangement of newaza or even the names of most basic judo in newaza outside of katame-waza. You would think that this would be basic, common knowledge, yet it isn't. Simple concepts such as bogyo, fusegi, hairi-kata, simply arrangements of entries such as oi-komi, hando, etc, are not known among the common judo population.

The point I am trying to make is ... it should not be any surprise in the least that the frequently demonstrated negative effects of judo on children's development are not commonly known. Add to this likely anecdotal experiences all of us have, success stories where we are proud to have so and so who once was this or that, but thanks to judo grew out to become this awesome person. Absolutely. Overall effects do not deny at all that you may have achieved some great successes.

It is not my intention to derail this thread, and nor am I going to extensively reply by quoting all the references here, partly because I have a large study in the process of publication. In that I also talk about the true history of judo as an education in Japan, several problematic which Kano incurred, how judo even at early stages was rejected because of serious concerns about the effects on children, and how Kano reinvented judo entirely having in mind overtaking the physical education in the Japanese educational system. Maybe it will help understanding how Kano's obsession equally led to many detrimental effects on judo, such as loss of martial arts aspects and others.

Finally, there are positive developments among scientists studying judo. A recent Japanese paper pleaded for critical study of judo rather than the nonsense that has come out of Japan for so long. To this day no Kodokan publication, for example, will even mention how judo became a tool of fascism in Japan around World War II, and yet in the framework of education it is essential to also understand how things can go wrong and how Kano's ideas were manipulated. Would a book on German history be acceptable if it 'skipped' the Nazi's and prosecution of the Jews and only focus on its rich cultural history and more positive developments ? Of course not. The idea of a history book in the framework of education is precisely to illustrate who things can go wrong and how far they can go wrong. Realize that we are only two years further since it became revealed in Japan that in 20 years time over 200 children had died in judo. Before that knowledge became known, the vision there too was that judo in children was unequivocally positive.

Illustrating the negative effects of children on judo does not have as a purpose to damage and kill off judo, but to sensitize people for the weaknesses and problems of judo, so that we can learn from it and do better. It's not too long ago since so many of us thought that judo champions were nearly invincible with amazing newaza skills, until they started participating in MMA and in BJJ. Suddenly, big judo names got their ass kicked by MMA fighters with barely any judo experience and BJJ-ers would wrap them up in newaza. It was a wake-up call. None of this though was intentionally done to damage judo, but it was the reality, a reality judoka had lost due to being locked up in their own propagandist world. Judoka should be grateful to MMA and BJJ for this wake-up call. It's still a lot better than when you had to find out those weaknesses of present day judo on the street while you yourself are threatened. Now, we can just realize by watching TV or our computer screen. Thanks to MMA and BJJ hopefully we will take the lesson and realize that judo has far more components than competitive scoring. We may realize that a position such as turtling is effective in JUDO COMPTETION as a CONTEST STRATEGY, but in the real world the MMA-er will take advantage when you take that position and beat the crap of you. Maybe now if as a judoka you find yourself on the street, you might realize that and survive by not taking that position to a real attacker not limited by IJF judo competitive rules.

In conclusion, do not be too critical about Catt's findings. They are perfectly in line with other research. Judo instruction to children in reality isn't at all unequivocally positive, but has serious concerns. However, it is possible --if one fully grasps what those studies have shown and implement the knowledge learnt from it-- to get the best out of judo also for children and turn it into a positive exercise. For that it becomes necessary though that instructor programs finally move away from propagandist approaches and are willing to accept the caveats and weaknesses of judo, and consequently amend judo instruction to children as is common and as is the standard today. A critical approach to judo instruction in children is something entirely different from fear-mongering. Judo also is not unique or not more dangerous or negative than various other sports. Some of the concerns it shares with other sports, and therefore hopefully would not be reason for parents to decide against judo in favor of a different sport.

P.S.: I can come back to this thread with more information such as references and further specifics only after my own research to which I referred is published, due to strict rules of the scientific publication process. So please, do not ask me at this point in time, also not per PM.

Judo Dad wrote:
Regarding the study, Effects of an after school judo program on children's self esteem, Catt, R. (2006). I am not critical of the findings. Catt herself concludes that further research was needed. Far from being too critical of Catt's work, I was considering conducting a research study on the effects of judo on children's self esteem in an Australian context, using a similar design with the same measurement instrument. BTW: I admire Catt's brevity.

Cichorei Kano wrote:

Judo Dad wrote:
Regarding the study, Effects of an after school judo program on children's self esteem, Catt, R. (2006). I am not critical of the findings. Catt herself concludes that further research was needed. Far from being too critical of Catt's work, I was considering conducting a research study on the effects of judo on children's self esteem in an Australian context, using a similar design with the same measurement instrument. BTW: I admire Catt's brevity.

Judo Dad,

Thanks for the clarification. I did not read that you were too critical, but alluded to the other studies with similar findings because you had highlighted the small sample size in her study. That is a critique whether intended so or not as small sample size negatively affects statistical power. Many studies, however, unfortunately do not mention statistical power, which also is a weakness, as it is important in properly interpreting whether a significant result is also meaningful. With regard to the topic of judo and children (and we are talking specifically judo now, no martial arts in general and even less non-Japanese martial arts) that in the mean time there exist also longitudinal studies where these effects on children were measured over several years of development. The results are in line with the effects of cross-sectional design studies. If you are interested we can in some future time PM and I can allude to my study (which is not original meta-analysis and review with regard to that aspect) and some of the key references with that work. My own study is about much more than this aspect but far more about how Kanô arrived at his design of judo for children, how it developed in Japan, what the problems were, and how kata instruction in judo for children can be implemented. The idea you raise is very interesting. I don't think that any of the work I have in mind was done in Australia, so I encourage you to continue and further develop your idea. Perhaps you might find in some of the other work also useful measuring tools to employ.

Okazi wrote:Hi Cichorei Kano:

The article I cut and pasted is not my own. It was written by Iulius-Cezar Macarie and Ron Roberts.

My thoughts: failure is a reality in Judo. Competition in Judo is a reality; reality should not be tampered with lol.

Failure to win and failure to perform; both are experienced at every competition and during every training session. I am having incredible difficulty reconciling the fact that kids or even adults are permitted to leave any mat area with the impression that their efforts were futile. That is what prompted my post.