Few days ago, we attended one of the kids’ classes at Boxing Academy. Boxing Academy is Egypt’s first professional academy teaching boxing, kick boxing, marital arts, and fitness. The academy is founded by the Olympics Champion Mohamed Reda Aly. He was keen from the very beginning to construct the sport in Egypt on international standards and use very high quality equipment. It provides classes for kids at different ages and for both genders. It has 2 branches, one inside Rehab club and the other is in Sherouk.
Let’s first set some benefits of kick boxing for kids
- It teaches kids how to act in common bullying situations at school. Although marital arts sports don’t educate kids to transfer violence to outside of the training space, they give them self-confidence to deal with verbal bullying and ability to defend themselves without hitting against physical bullying.
- It teaches them respect through some training rituals as salutation at the end of the training and the obligation to stick to the game rules.
- It helps kids with their studies and other mental activities because it makes them think faster as during the game, they have to develop defensive tactics quickly.
- It’s a very good cure for kids who have limited attention spans as it teaches kids to focus on the task at hand and improves their reaction skills.
- It helps build strong balance, healthy postures, and balanced movement which if not taken care at early age leads to cramped organs and breathing problems.
Fitness conquered the class
In the boxing class, your child is learning more than some marital arts, he’s having a complete fitness experience. The class is more than a set of exercises of kicking and punching, it targets most body parts. The coaches initiated with letting the kids warm up with some adductor exercises to get their bodies ready for the training.
Throughout the class, the kids were subjected to different fitness workouts. They did some push-ups, squats, stepping, and abs exercises.
3 main pillars of the class atmosphere
Discipline, encouragement, and fun were the main components of the class!
The coaches were very keen on maintaining an atmosphere of discipline throughout the class. Kids were asked to follow the rules and respect their order of movement.
However, this discipline didn’t force a dull atmosphere on the class. The coaches maintained a balance of discipline and fun. They laughed with the kids and included some playing time apart from the training. The kids were following the instructions while laughing!
The most important part was the encouragement and motivation they were keen to spread all over the class which kids really need in sports. “Look to the person in the mirror and hit him.” This is one of the coaches’ instructions to the kids when they were doing some punching in front of a mirror. The coach used to encourage them by saying that the hit didn’t touch him when they were playing one to one.
Of course there is no perfect sports for all kids and you have to respect your kids’ preferences when choosing a sport to play. However, keep in mind that kick boxing class at Boxing Academy is a challenging distinguished experience that will improve your kid’s self-confidence, make him more fit, release his violent energy, and teach him to use his physical force in a proper way.
