Episode 559 - Children Training with Adults
In this episode, Jeremy and co-host Andrew Adams talk about Children Training with Adults.
Children Training with Adults - Episode 559
Could there be more advantages than disadvantages when children and/or teens train with adults? In this episode, Jeremy and co-host Andrew Adams weigh in the issue at hand of children training with adults. Listen as they discuss about special treatments, or the absence thereof, regarding various considerations such as sparring, tournaments, and more.
Children Training with Adults
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Hey, what's going on everybody? Welcome! This is whistlekick Martial Arts Radio episode 559 and still, Andrew and I are talking about children training with adults. Yeah, there's Andrew waiting. If you are checking this out on YouTube, you'll see a video version of the episode. But of course, in your podcast feed, it's gonna be audio 'cause that's just how we do it. I'm Jeremy Lesniak, joined by Andrew Adams and why do we do this? We do it because we love martial arts. We love traditional martials arts and now that's what whistlekick all about. If you wanna see what we've got going on at whistlekick, go to whistlekick.com. You can check out all the stuff that we have available for sale and if you find something you like, you know helps out the show and you can even save 15% with the code podcast15. Now, if you wanna see what's going on with this show on it's on a separate website, whisltekickmartialartsradio.com. We bring you two episodes every week and it's to connect, educate, and entertain traditional martial artists around the world. And you know, this is a good example because Andrew, you and I connected because of whistlekick and now we're entertained, and we've educated each other, and it just continues to spread right? It's just one of those things.
Andrew Adams:
It's a full circle.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It is, it is. Everything's going full circle. If you're watching, you can see that I'm reading my notes and if you like the work that we do here, if you want to help us out yeah, you could make a purchase, but you could also share an episode, you could leave us a review on whatever podcast platform you use, or you could join the Patreon - patreon.com/whistlekick. We bring you new stuff. Lately, I've been posting chapters of the novel that I'm writing over there because it's a martials arts-esque novel. And actually, I finished chapter...the third chapter last night so that's gonna go up today. And just to those of you out there helping out, I appreciate you. We appreciate you. So, Andrew we got something a little bit different today. This kinda led from a listener question.
Andrew Adams:
Which is great. I love to get these.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, yeah. This is a lot of fun. It makes it you know, as you might imagine coming up with stuff to talk about can take some time. And whenever you're putting in the other content, you wonder are people gonna like this? And most of the time, the answer's yes but in this case, we've got somebody who wrote in and we're gonna answer their question. We're well, I shouldn't say answer because it's not that cut and dried, but we are going to talk about the subject that they have raised. So, I'm about to read this. Is there anything you want to add in before I read what they wrote?
Andrew Adams:
No, no, go ahead.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay, all right. As we would do it normally, we're not gonna name the name and there's nothing personally identifying in this but if we had something like that, we would edit it a little bit unless the person explicitly says, "Go ahead and read my name." So here we go - "My dojo is smaller so while we have kids' class and adults' class, there is no teen class. It's a harder style of Karate in offshoot of Kyokushin and while I trust my Sensei's judgment, he started putting young teenagers into class with adults. While we're on Zoom it's fine, but I'm not sure how I feel about sparing. My main concern is they're still children and although they may be tall, it just doesn't feel right to fight a child with the amount of contact we use. As a second matter, in our tournaments, they're allowed more protective gear including chest pads and helmets than we are so expect them to train as they would for tournament. I know this makes some people feel uncomfortable as well. Since we're still on Zoom, it hasn't become an issue yet, but I was just curious on your thoughts as to one, when children should train with adults? And two, what special treatment, if any, they should be afforded? I have helped teach kids' classes in the past and participated in their testing and I can say, it's a fairly sizeable jump from kids’ class to adult. On top of it, they will come in outranking almost all of the adults which makes going soft on them or giving special treatment even harder to navigate." So, when...Andrew, is still this part of the question or do we get into you now.
Andrew Adams:
No, this is some kind of my notes here.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay, these are your notes so let's leave it there and we can start chatting. It's an important question and it's a question that occurs in probably martial arts classes just about everywhere and not just martial arts but pretty much anything because the transition from kid to adults is grey, right? You could point at we're someone our age and say that these are clearly adults. You could point at a 6-year-old and say, this is clearly a child. But there comes a time whether it's adolescence or teen years or depending on the subject matter even 20's. I mean, the way a kid in college learns, right, I just had a kid in college not an adult in college, a young adult in college, right? Depending on the context, that age can shift. I even have friends who've said you know, basically anybody under 40 is a kid. Maybe not as relevant to what we're talking about today, but I think you could still make a point for that.
Andrew Adams:
It becomes very nebulous, the difference between "kids" and "adults". Like you said, the subject matters and in this case, we're talking martial arts and even within martial arts I think there may be a case that it varies from the school depending on the kind of school.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah.
Andrew Adams:
This particular person was talking about their school being an offshoot of Kyokushin. For those that are listening that might not realize, Kyokushin is known for very hard, full contact sparing. They don't do you know, punches or kicks to the head. That's not allowed but you know, they're going full force with...
Jeremy Lesniak:
They're kicking to the leg! If you've ever trained with a Kyokushin fighter and the leg-kicked you, phew! Brutal!
Andrew Adams:
Absolutely. So, I think that style of sparing is definitely different than other styles which I think changes where that line may be in a school.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Absolutely. So, I think you know, we could probably spend an hour discussing the philosophy of different iterations but I wanna make sure that we talk about specifically what's going on in this person's school. And I think that there would be some people who can infer information for what we might say about their school, we're probably gonna get some generalities thrown in here somewhere. But instead of making this a long conversation, let's try to be a little focused and talk about what's going on for this person. So, as they said on Zoom, doesn't really matter. We're talking about forms or basics, doesn't really matter. We're just coming to play...it comes into play when we have partner work and I would say specifically free form partner work where a level of contact is expected because yeah, I'm thinking of myself, right, we tend to think about our own personal circumstances and I'm thinking about myself at 13 wearing a Brown belt with plenty of competency, knowledge but I was 5'3", 5'4" and 110 lbs.
Andrew Adams:
Yup.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right, like yeah if I kicked you in the head it would hurt but if you kicked me in the head, I might die.
Andrew Adams:
Absolutely.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And maybe I'm being a little bit sarcastic but there's still a reality there that most teenagers are capable of causing more harm than they're able to handle.
Andrew Adams:
Their bodies are not fully developed yet. They just aren't. They're not continued...they are still continuing to develop and grow, and their bones are still getting strong and...
Jeremy Lesniak:
Absolutely.
Andrew Adams:
I think that makes a difference.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And I think as important, if not more important, they're minds not fully developed. Depending on what scientific research you're looking at, it's really about 25 years old now we're saying that the brain continues to develop up until then. And we think about teenagers you know we think about 12, 13, 14-year-olds someone who might be tall. I mean, you've got plenty of kids that age who are 6 ft. tall - not rare. It happens but yet, their impulse control doesn't exist in the way that a fully formed adult's brain does and that matters. So, how do we navigate this? You know, I think we can look at this specific instance from two perspectives: how would I handle this, how would we handle this as instructors, and how do I handle this a student. Because as a student, you've got much less authority, but you still have to play by the rules.
Andrew Adams:
Yup. For one of the things that I've often said and will always continue to say about everything is that to me, it's all about open, clear communication.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah.
Andrew Adams:
You know, understanding what is expected. You know, your instructor should be having discussions with the adults when there are kids coming in so that the adults know how to handle this type of situation. You know, and the question here in lies as the question asker mentioned, do we...I'll put myself in that situation...if I'm in that school, do I go easy on that student, on that child because they're only 13 or 14 years old? Or do I go full force? Well, obviously I would never go full force with a 14-year-old but is the instructor expecting me to do that? I don't know because they haven't given me any communication as to what they expect.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Sure. I think for me, when I think about this situation, I'm reflecting back. I've trained in a lot of schools and in almost everyone, there are implicit rules of engagement. Whether or not you realize it, there are rules of engagement and there are comprised of the rules that the instructor has set down either globally or that specific day and then there's space usually in between that for the people participating to establish their own rules. Here's a great example. I generally, when someone's being a jerk, don't care how hard someone goes sparing me. As long as they understand I'm going to go that hard back. And that's...we probably all experienced this. We start working with someone and they're just, either they're having a bad day, or they don't realize what's going on and this is a specific that a lot of kids will go through. Their bodies grow, they get stronger from seeming week to week at times and they don't realize they're hitting too hard. And so, I'll tell them, "Are you okay with me going as hard with you as you are with me?". And that usually settles people down because, "Oh no, I'm not okay with that." Well then, tone it down. There's that space in between that we start talking about how to arrange it and I think as you say, communication if we are willing to take a second before class, after class, during class to start a dialogue or even when we bow. We start working together. "Hey, let's not go as hard as we did last time." - You know, something like that. What do you think?
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, again communication. You know, as long as everyone knows what's going on, I think that's important because some might make the argument that if I am as an adult, I'm going easy on the student then I'm not getting full training because I'm losing out because I'm not getting to do that hard, full training. But I would make the argument that learning how to control your power is...that's part of training. You should learn how to control that. And so, I think the ability to alter your intensity level is part of training and it should be seen that way and not seen as a, "Ugh, man, I have to slow down for this kid I'm fighting."
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, it's funny you bring up power and I've heard this argument before. It doesn't come up very often but the argument that you know, I only go full force, I only go top speed, I only make it super real and I don't like working with younger students or lower rank students because I don't have the opportunity to do that.
Andrew Adams:
Okay.
Jeremy Lesniak:
If I ask you to perform...if we're doing basics, if we're doing basic techniques and you know that we're doing ten of them, we're doing ten sidekicks, there's no way you're going full force on all of them. You cannot execute multiple, concurrent, connected techniques more than two or three that are going to be full power and equally powerful across the set of ten. You are automatically going to tone that down. So, once we established that there is a time and a place to reduce speed, to reduce power as appropriate based on the training context, we can see that there are times where it's appropriate to do so with people because of their skill, or injuries, or the desired aspect for training because sometimes we're training a specific thing even if it's contact and freeform. And one of the keys with we'll say teenagers is that they might not have the life experience to know, hey if I punch you in the face, and you punch me back in the face, it might really hurt, and I might break my nose and that may be bad. Because they're 13.
Andrew Adams:
Yup.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Go ahead.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, so I...we both got lost.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's a good thing we have this on video.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, I know.
Jeremy Lesniak:
For those of you listening, we have this in video because I can see that Andrew's wheels are turning. My wheels are turning and we're both trying to leave enough space for each other but I'm sure we could both run for like 10 minutes and ramble.
Andrew Adams:
The other side of the coin, though, is from the child's perspective. If there isn't communication about what's going on, either the adult is gonna go full force and they're gonna get hurt and they're gonna lose all the time. Either A - lose all the time and/or get hurt which means they're not gonna come anymore, right? They're done. You just lost a student.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right.
Andrew Adams:
That's one aspect or you are gonna go easy on them and they're not gonna necessarily realize that's the case because they are 13 or 14 and don't realize what's going on. And they're gonna get inflated ego about, "I'm amazing because I just beat that Black belt and I'm only a Green belt or whatever.”
Jeremy Lesniak:
I've heard it happened.
Andrew Adams:
Yup, absolutely and...
Jeremy Lesniak:
You probably had it happened some kid scores a point on you and they think they're king of mountain.
Andrew Adams:
Yup and but what that student doesn't realize, what that child doesn't realize is that you're going easy on them and letting them so that they can progress a little bit and get some self-confidence, maybe? But you have to be careful that you don't get overboard. And so, that's another side of the coin to think about.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right. Now specifically, let's dig in here and start to pull back. We're talking about really more of a transition. I would imagine that once a teenager's been in the adult class for 8-period of time say, 6 months, 12 months, they've wrapped their head around what's expected of them and some stasis has been reached, right? They know what's expected of them. Whether or not everybody likes it is a different story but there has been some kind of adjustment period. Where's it most difficult? When those kids go from being the oldest and generally the highest-ranking students in the kids' class to the adult class and you even alluded to it before that, or maybe it's in the question, that quite often they are higher rank than a lot of the adults. And so, they're assuming that they step in as peers when they really don't. And here's the best way I think to look at this - what would you do with someone who came in from another school? You might respect their rank. You might respect their technique but there would still be an integration period. You would still make sure that people understood, "Hey, this is how we do it. No, no not that way. This is how we do it." And again, it comes back to what you said in the beginning - open, clear communication.
Andrew Adams:
Absolutely. Yup, because the other thing to keep in mind...and this is for sure, this is more of an issue with smaller schools, right. If you got a school with a hundred students, you likely don't have this as much of an issue because you're able to have separate classes for teenagers. But if you don't have that luxury, and I train in a very small dojo, you know...Our classes we got a little itty bitty kids’ class for like 3 to 5-year-olds. We've got a class for 6 to 12 and then 13-year-olds are in our adults' class, right.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right.
Andrew Adams:
Because we don't have that luxury... because the other side of the token is if you consider that it's unfair to have 13 or 14-year-old who could be 5'3", 5'4" you know, fighting with adults...is it fair to have that person, that 13-year-old who is 5'4" fighting 10-year-olds who are 2 and a half feet tall. Like, that's not fair either.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, no it's not. And there's no perfect solution here.
Andrew Adams:
No, absolutely not.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Even among schools, and we have some that listen. You know, I've talked, and I've thought of them. Even with schools that have a let's say, a teen class, the difference between a 13-year-old and a 17-year-old or an 18-year-old is huge. Potentially, physically huge and developmentally just as big.
Andrew Adams:
Yup.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So, really what we're talking about here even though there's a specific around teens versus adults...what we're really talking about is how do you play up or play down? As I've heard it expressed in sports like I've got friends who play tennis. They talk about playing down so that everybody could have fun and learn. And I think you can do the exact same thing in martial arts. Again, with communication.
Andrew Adams:
Yup. In regard to the rank issue if you have...you're absolutely right. If there's someone coming from another school you know, there's this transition period but again, you're discussing with them and they're understanding what's going on. I also think you may, if you have a smaller school, you may want to consider if you have let's say a Brown belt child coming into the adult class...especially and I'm thinking in terms of this harder style of sparing. I would probably not advocate a Brown belt child teenager sparing against a White or Green belt adult. I would only have them spared against adults that are the same rank for two reasons: One, the adult students that are under ranked compared to this child, and I don't mean ability, I'm not talking about ability.
Jeremy Lesniak:
No, no I understand.
Andrew Adams:
They're not gonna have as much control as typically as an adult with a higher rank.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Sure.
Andrew Adams:
And so, I think that it helps to delineate a little bit of the disparity between ranks because the child is only gonna be fighting someone of the same rank or higher.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right. There is something to be said when you work with a lower rank, whether we realize or not. There is a maturity that has to happen there. If you...I hope, no instructor is going to take a first-class White belt and pair them with that person in the school who is a jerk and even though they have some rank, they hit a little bit too hard because we haven't gotten them to calm down yet.
Andrew Adams:
Yup.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Why don't we do that? Why don't we put those two together? Because the older, higher rank, so to speak, student is lacking maturity that is relevant in that context. It's quite often when I think about the schools that have problems with this, it's because partners are randomly assigned.
Andrew Adams:
Absolutely.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And a good instructor...and even partners are randomly assigned, will see the problems coming and all right, "We're gonna switch now and I want you and you to go together and everybody else grab a partner." So, you head it off. You make sure that the person who's problematic gets matched up with somebody who's not problematic. You avoid the problem, and you go from there.
Andrew Adams:
Absolutely.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Do we have anything else to say? I think, we've kicked to this one pretty well.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, I think so.
Jeremy Lesniak:
There's a pun that I hope we don't lean into. Fuck, I'm so sorry I even said it.
Andrew Adams:
And you can't rewind.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I can't. This is...we try not to edit that stuff. Anything else you want to add?
Andrew Adams:
No, I think that pretty well sums it up. I mean, you know some...the other thing to keep in mind is that the child in class may very well not have the maturity to be able to stand up to his instructor and say, “I’m not comfortable doing this." And so, if they're going into a sparing situation that they're not comfortable with, they're not going to be the ones to say, "I'm not sure what to do because this person's gonna kick me really hard." I mean, really hard and they're just doing it because the teacher's telling them to do so. I think it's important for the like, you said the good instructors will recognize those things and head it off at the past so that doesn't happen. And that would happen with communication.
Jeremy Lesniak:
The best martial arts schools and I did an episode on this a couple years ago...It finally clicked in for me. The best martial arts schools are one where the culture is of everyone is there to help everyone else train.
Andrew Adams:
Oh, good point.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You're gonna learn by consequence, right. Just by being there, you're going to learn. But if you show up and you train, and you make it about the other people or if you're sparring partner work, you make it about the other person...if everybody's doing that, there are far fewer problems. I could think about the school, specifically, that I've learned the most at, the ones I've learned the least at, the one who were the most problems, the least problems and it all falls on that division line. Where is your motivation coming from? Is it to benefit yourself or are you here in service to others?
Andrew Adams:
That's a great point. I hadn't thought of that but that's great.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Hey, that's my job here. Isn't it? To come up with things that nobody else thinks of.
Andrew Adams:
Educate. Educate and entertain. So, I like to call it 'edutain'.
Jeremy Lesniak:
'Edutainment'.
Andrew Adams:
Yup.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, all right. Well, I think we've got this one wrapped up.
Andrew Adams:
I don't know how useful our discussion was for the particular question asker, but I hope it makes them think about it and you know, come up with something that works for them.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I think I would say, if what we've talked about today is not helpful, I think it's because ,likely, of one thing - that is, there's a culture in the school where there's not communication. Where people are not used to speaking up and advocating for themselves and what they need. And saying, " Hey, this doesn't work for me." And they go home bloody and bruised and patch themselves up and maybe they even miss a class and that's just part of the culture. And you know what, there are schools like that and I'm not gonna take anything away from anybody there. If that's the case, I don't know how to help with this one.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, good point.
Jeremy Lesniak:
All right. If anybody else has feedback you know, we're down to hear. If you wanna post it publicly, you've got a few places. You've got the whistlekick Martial Arts Radio - Behind the Scenes Facebook group. You've got on the general whistlekick page when episodes come out, we drop...there's an automatic, man I can't talk this morning, Facebook post that comes out. You can find it on Twitter and of course, this is episode 559. You can find it at whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. We fixed most of the problems with the website that popped out recently and we're almost done with a few more. So, thank you for your patience if you're someone who's been missing the website. Apparently, we've grown to the size where we target and dealing with this constant bombardment has been a challenge. What else do I have to say?
Andrew Adams:
I got my notes. Here they are. All right. What did I miss?
Jeremy Lesniak:
If you want to support us, you got the Patreon. You got leaving reviews. You could follow us on social media. You can do anything that might seem relevant. Share an episode if this one...if you've heard somebody complaining about this specific problem, maybe you show them this episode. "Hey, those guys talked about this. Check it out." And if you make a purchase at whistlekick.com, you've got the code podcast15 to save you 15%. If you see somebody else out in the world wearing a whistlekick hat, or a hoodie...Andrew nor I are wearing anything with whistlekick on. Actually, that's not true. I have a whistlekick t-shirt right now. I'm not gonna semi-disrobe to prove it. And if you have guest suggestions, topic suggestions, questions to ask, whatever it is, email me - jeremy@whistlekick.com and I'll share it Andrew just like we do it on this one. So, you want to send us out?
Andrew Adams:
I can do that.
Jeremy Lesniak:
All right, take it.
Andrew Adams:
And as always, oh my gosh, why am I [25:51:01]
Jeremy Lesniak:
Until next time...
Andrew Adams and Jeremy Lesniak:
Train hard, smile, and have a great day!