Parents looking for a martial art for their child usually weigh three things: whether the child will turn aggressive, whether they will last longer than two months, and whether it is worth paying for a class they will have to argue about every week. All three worries are fair. Here is how it works with us.
Age groups and times
Children’s training is for children up to 16, split into two groups by age rather than by level. Classes run twice a week, in fixed pairs of days:
Monday and Wednesday: 15.30-16.30 and 16.30-17.30.
Tuesday and Thursday: 15.30-16.30 and 16.30-17.30.
A child attends one pair - Monday and Wednesday or Tuesday and Thursday, always at the same time. That means two fixed afternoons a week, which is usually the decisive detail when fitting training around school and everything else.
The earlier hour suits roughly six to ten year olds and the later one ten to sixteen, but we place children by the child rather than the birth date. Some nine year olds belong in the older group and the other way round.
When a child is old enough
Most children are ready at six. Not because of physical capacity - that is nearly the same at five - but because of attention. The class runs sixty minutes and contains three or four minutes where you have to stand still and listen. For a five year old that is usually still too much; at six it shifts.
There is no upper limit. A sixteen year old who wants to stay moves into the adult afternoon group, where they are often the youngest and, within six months, one of the better ones.
What happens in the hour
The class is not a shrunken adult class. It is built around the fact that a child cannot hold sixty minutes of one thing.
It opens with a bow and a line-up - a short, formal start that tells the child something has begun. Then a warm-up with plenty of movement, then technique: stances, strikes into the air, kicks, weight transfer. Games are threaded through, and they are not a break from training but training in another form - balancing on one leg, reaction games, relays where you have to stand correctly.
The last ten minutes settle things. Some breathing, sometimes a short story about Shaolin or about a word we use. It ends with a bow, the same way it began.
Will the child become aggressive
This is the most common worry and the answer is reliably no - provided the school is the right one.
With us, children do not spar early. There is no sparring in the first year or two. Not because it is dangerous, but because a child first has to learn that strength is something you hold back. A strike into the air, into a pad, into a precisely defined target - all of it teaches control. A strike into a classmate, too early, teaches something else.
In practice the opposite of what parents fear tends to happen. A child who used to be quick with their hands stops within a few months, because there is suddenly somewhere to put the energy, and because in the hall they see what someone who genuinely knows something looks like when they are not showing it.
What a child takes home
Three things parents mention most, in order of frequency: attention - visible in homework, not only in the hall. Posture - in a child carrying a school bag this shows within months. And calm in front of the unfamiliar, which comes from being bad at something new for a while every week and discovering that this is not a disaster.
Enrolling and cost
A month of twice-weekly training is 70 €, a three-month block 190 €, an annual card 560 €. There is no joining fee.
You can start with a single visit - the child simply joins the group. We suggest a parent stays for that first one and not afterwards. Children behave differently when a parent is present, and in the hall that is very quickly visible.
All they need is comfortable clothes. We train barefoot.
