Hi all. Noob here.Our 7 y/o son went to his first tournament yesterday. We were suprised to see that he was the only kid performing Tae-Kwon-Do. As this was his first tournament, he competed in forms, and came in 7th. It just didn't seem like he could fairly compete against the karate forms which were much more complex and lengthy. Is it possible to fairly compete against the karate forms? He's a little discouraged. Thanks in advance!
Competing against Karate in forms
- Thread starter xray328
- Start date
Hi welcome to MT! It's possible to compete against karateka in form/kata as long as there are judges who know both styles forms/kata. The complexity doesn't matter really as the judging will be on the execution not the kata chosen. I used to compete a lot in kata competitions and you could find quite often than some people would win with a simple well executed kata against people going through the motions in a more difficult kata. A lot of people chose the more complicated forms thinking they will get points for knowing a higher one. I love seeing a simple form/kata down well.
Tell him please don't be discouraged, to come 7th in your first tournament is pretty cool, in my first few I didn't come anywhere. The trick is to do your form the very best you can, to get inside it and understand it.
I do think though that at 7 he would be better competing in TKD competitions, did his club enter him? If so I'm a bit surprised.
- Thread Starter
- #3
Actually his school doesn't really endorse competitions at all. His instructor told us that it's tough to find a fair competition because alot of times its about who knows who's kid, and the kids that deserve to win don't.
So..we told his instructor that we were insterested in him competing because we wanted for him to be able to use some of what he was learning instead of him just repeatatively practicing his forms without ever really using them. Kind of like practicing baseball and never playing a game.
So his instructor gave us the entry form and a hardy handshake and not much else after that. I mean he told us some basic information about what to expect, but it really didn't prepare him for what he faced yesterday. We did pay a student instructor extra for a few private lessons, but it didn't really seem like much of a priority for them. The student instructor reviewed his form with him, and that was about it. He really did a good job on his form, but it asn't nearly as "showy" as the karate forms, and it seemed like "showy" was all the judges cared about. Most kids were getting 8.4 or 8.5's but this one kid got done and a judge yelled out something about how good he did then gave him a 9.6, almost like he knew the kid...kinda made me wonder about the fairness of it all
The tournament was 2 hours away, and my kid was by himself in a totally new enviroment, not really knowing what to expect, or what was expected of him. No one from his school went with him, and as you can imagine, he was pretty nervous about the whole thing.We got there at 8:45am and he didn't do his form until almost 2pm. So we drove two hours to wait 5 hours for him to do a 45 second form, then drive two hours back home. Talk about a long day.All in all, it wasn't a good experience, besides the fact that he knows what to expect next time.
So..we told his instructor that we were insterested in him competing because we wanted for him to be able to use some of what he was learning instead of him just repeatatively practicing his forms without ever really using them. Kind of like practicing baseball and never playing a game.
So his instructor gave us the entry form and a hardy handshake and not much else after that. I mean he told us some basic information about what to expect, but it really didn't prepare him for what he faced yesterday. We did pay a student instructor extra for a few private lessons, but it didn't really seem like much of a priority for them. The student instructor reviewed his form with him, and that was about it. He really did a good job on his form, but it asn't nearly as "showy" as the karate forms, and it seemed like "showy" was all the judges cared about. Most kids were getting 8.4 or 8.5's but this one kid got done and a judge yelled out something about how good he did then gave him a 9.6, almost like he knew the kid...kinda made me wonder about the fairness of it all
The tournament was 2 hours away, and my kid was by himself in a totally new enviroment, not really knowing what to expect, or what was expected of him. No one from his school went with him, and as you can imagine, he was pretty nervous about the whole thing.We got there at 8:45am and he didn't do his form until almost 2pm. So we drove two hours to wait 5 hours for him to do a 45 second form, then drive two hours back home. Talk about a long day.All in all, it wasn't a good experience, besides the fact that he knows what to expect next time.
Greetings, xray, it's good to have you with us on MT!
Tez' post makes a couple of excellent points very nicely. She's dead right that people believe you can do better with kata than with the colored-belt hyungs, because of the seemingly greater challenge posed by the complexity of the forms. And while it's true that a good Palgwe will defeat a so-so kata, what about a case where the performance is technically on about the same level? I'd have to say that in that kind of situation, there's a good chance that the kata will carry the day. But there's more to it than that, I think.
One of the key factors in making an impression in any performance is the dramatic content. And from what I've seen, most dojos teach a kind of alternating pace in the performance of kata which is very different from what you see in a lot of TKD performances. If you watch even a short kata, say one of the Pinans, you'll see karateka perform them hard and very kinetic over one subsequence of the kata, then slower with a lot more latent energy and tension, then smooth, swift and flowing, and then hard-kinetic `snappy' again. Hyungs, on the other hand, are almost always performed at a much more measured, even pace; the rhythm doesn't change much from one subsequence of the hyung to another. After watching zillions of both kata and hyungs performed in tournaments, I've come to the tentative conclusion that the dramatic differences in pacing, rhythm and intensity within kata performance give them a greater visual impact, which is going to mean, at the bottom line, that judges are going to pay more attention to them. It's not a matter of technical quality; it would be nice if that's all the judges paid attention to, but alas, they're going to be affected by packaging as much as judges for diving, figure skating, mogul skiing and other events where presentation can be managed in such a way that technical competence can be edged out by flash.
That's obviously not going to happen when a flashy but seriously flawed performance goes up against a demonstration of technically perfect or near-perfect movement. But things aren't usually anywhere near that clear-cut. So the way kata performance seem to be taught with respect to the dynamics, pace and flow of motion, on the one hand, vs. how those are done in hyungs, looms pretty large I think.
I do, in addition to TKD hyungs, a number of Japanese kata. They're part of our curriculum; I've learned them from my instructor, who performs them beautifully; but since he's a TKD man, his interpretation of Rohai, Empi and several of the others is much more in standard TKD style—in 4/4 time, so to speak, as opposed to the very `syncopated' performance of these same kata I've seen comparably senior karate masters perform. I don't really have any advice for you based on these observations, but I think they might be relevant to the situation. I think it's great that your child competes in forms, and I think you should offer him every encouragment. But it's probably worth keeping this difference in style of performance between the two kinds of forms in mind for the future...
Tez' post makes a couple of excellent points very nicely. She's dead right that people believe you can do better with kata than with the colored-belt hyungs, because of the seemingly greater challenge posed by the complexity of the forms. And while it's true that a good Palgwe will defeat a so-so kata, what about a case where the performance is technically on about the same level? I'd have to say that in that kind of situation, there's a good chance that the kata will carry the day. But there's more to it than that, I think.
One of the key factors in making an impression in any performance is the dramatic content. And from what I've seen, most dojos teach a kind of alternating pace in the performance of kata which is very different from what you see in a lot of TKD performances. If you watch even a short kata, say one of the Pinans, you'll see karateka perform them hard and very kinetic over one subsequence of the kata, then slower with a lot more latent energy and tension, then smooth, swift and flowing, and then hard-kinetic `snappy' again. Hyungs, on the other hand, are almost always performed at a much more measured, even pace; the rhythm doesn't change much from one subsequence of the hyung to another. After watching zillions of both kata and hyungs performed in tournaments, I've come to the tentative conclusion that the dramatic differences in pacing, rhythm and intensity within kata performance give them a greater visual impact, which is going to mean, at the bottom line, that judges are going to pay more attention to them. It's not a matter of technical quality; it would be nice if that's all the judges paid attention to, but alas, they're going to be affected by packaging as much as judges for diving, figure skating, mogul skiing and other events where presentation can be managed in such a way that technical competence can be edged out by flash.
That's obviously not going to happen when a flashy but seriously flawed performance goes up against a demonstration of technically perfect or near-perfect movement. But things aren't usually anywhere near that clear-cut. So the way kata performance seem to be taught with respect to the dynamics, pace and flow of motion, on the one hand, vs. how those are done in hyungs, looms pretty large I think.
I do, in addition to TKD hyungs, a number of Japanese kata. They're part of our curriculum; I've learned them from my instructor, who performs them beautifully; but since he's a TKD man, his interpretation of Rohai, Empi and several of the others is much more in standard TKD style—in 4/4 time, so to speak, as opposed to the very `syncopated' performance of these same kata I've seen comparably senior karate masters perform. I don't really have any advice for you based on these observations, but I think they might be relevant to the situation. I think it's great that your child competes in forms, and I think you should offer him every encouragment. But it's probably worth keeping this difference in style of performance between the two kinds of forms in mind for the future...
To be honest I think your son's school has probably been proved right about competitions.
I think you need to discuss this with your son's instructors as I don't think they have explained what forms are for. You don't 'use' them as such and not in a competition certainly. They are a teaching tool, a method of learning moves. The importance of forms is in the Bunkai, the meaning behind the moves. There are many on this forum who can explain this much better than I can though. 'Exile' and "Upnorthkyosa' are very good at explaining, I suggest you use the search button and look at some of their posts on forms/kata/hyungs/patterns ( all the same thing).
Your son will 'use' the forms when he spars or does self defence, and the forms really do need to be done over and over again I'm afraid! I was told each one has to be done at least a thousand times!
I'm not sure about baseball terms but forms are like practising various throws or learning how to hit various balls it's not actually playing the game itself. Please do talk to your son's instructors as I think they may well feel hurt by your decision to take your son to a karate competition. It will give you all a chance to sort out any misunderstandings I think.
I think you need to discuss this with your son's instructors as I don't think they have explained what forms are for. You don't 'use' them as such and not in a competition certainly. They are a teaching tool, a method of learning moves. The importance of forms is in the Bunkai, the meaning behind the moves. There are many on this forum who can explain this much better than I can though. 'Exile' and "Upnorthkyosa' are very good at explaining, I suggest you use the search button and look at some of their posts on forms/kata/hyungs/patterns ( all the same thing).
Your son will 'use' the forms when he spars or does self defence, and the forms really do need to be done over and over again I'm afraid! I was told each one has to be done at least a thousand times!
I'm not sure about baseball terms but forms are like practising various throws or learning how to hit various balls it's not actually playing the game itself. Please do talk to your son's instructors as I think they may well feel hurt by your decision to take your son to a karate competition. It will give you all a chance to sort out any misunderstandings I think.
Flying Crane
Sr. Grandmaster
There could be other issues going on here as well. Many schools, regardless of the system practiced, are simply not interested in competition. They just don't feel inclined to participate in the sporting side of the martial arts, and that is perfectly OK. If your son really wants to compete, he may need to find a different school that is excited about competitions, and trains for that kind of thing. If he stays with his current school, it looks like he will get little encouragement to compete. If you son is OK with that, then it's fine.
People train in martial arts for many many reasons, and competition is often something that people are NOT interested in, and it doesn't mean anything negative with regards to that person's skill and knowledge. Many extremely skilled and talented martial artists, who are excellent teachers, simply don't have an interest in competition. Instead, they focus on martial arts as a vehicle for developing effective self-defense skills, an excellent method of exercise and fitness, self-improvement, and many other benefits that come from training.
So I guess first off, make sure your SON is interested in competing, before you make competition into an issue. If it is just YOU who feel he should compete, you might be doing him a disservice, so just be careful about how you approach that with a 7-year-old. Make sure he is on a path that HE enjoys and benefits from, or else his martial arts career will end very quickly. If he perceives an expectation to do some aspect that he doesn't want to do, it's gonna be all over in a hurry.
That being said, it can be a disadvantage to compete in a tournament if you practice a less well-known style from the other competitors and judges. When I was young, I practiced kenpo, and most of the tournaments in my area were heavily Tae Kwon Do, with some smattering of karate. But nobody else did kenpo. Nobody recognized or understood my kata. I had to make some minor changes and adjustments to my kata, to make them a little more "karate-ish" or "tae kwon do-ish", in order to have any chance at success. I did manage to have some modest success, but quickly lost interest in competition and eliminated that aspect of my training for many years. My school at that time was fairly ambivalent regarding competition, so it was no big deal.
I personally sort of don't see the point in going to competitions that are only one style. I think in a martial arts tournament, you should compete against many different styles, because that is the real competition. Not just the other guys who are doing your same system. But there are many styles out there, and some are definitely more well-known than others, and this will be reflected in the background and knowledge of the judges. You only get 4 or 5 judges in a kata competition, and they only know what they have been trained in. So if none of them have experience in your system, it makes it more difficult for them to judge you fairly. If they are intelligent, and skilled, they should be able to recognize quality when they see it, even if they aren't familiar with the details, but not everyone can do that, and personal biases will always come into the picture. So competition is ALWAYS a very subjective situation, it can be frustrating, often is not fair (even tho the judges may be doing their best to be fair), and can be discouraging, especially for a child. So just understand this, if your son chooses to continue with competitions.
People train in martial arts for many many reasons, and competition is often something that people are NOT interested in, and it doesn't mean anything negative with regards to that person's skill and knowledge. Many extremely skilled and talented martial artists, who are excellent teachers, simply don't have an interest in competition. Instead, they focus on martial arts as a vehicle for developing effective self-defense skills, an excellent method of exercise and fitness, self-improvement, and many other benefits that come from training.
So I guess first off, make sure your SON is interested in competing, before you make competition into an issue. If it is just YOU who feel he should compete, you might be doing him a disservice, so just be careful about how you approach that with a 7-year-old. Make sure he is on a path that HE enjoys and benefits from, or else his martial arts career will end very quickly. If he perceives an expectation to do some aspect that he doesn't want to do, it's gonna be all over in a hurry.
That being said, it can be a disadvantage to compete in a tournament if you practice a less well-known style from the other competitors and judges. When I was young, I practiced kenpo, and most of the tournaments in my area were heavily Tae Kwon Do, with some smattering of karate. But nobody else did kenpo. Nobody recognized or understood my kata. I had to make some minor changes and adjustments to my kata, to make them a little more "karate-ish" or "tae kwon do-ish", in order to have any chance at success. I did manage to have some modest success, but quickly lost interest in competition and eliminated that aspect of my training for many years. My school at that time was fairly ambivalent regarding competition, so it was no big deal.
I personally sort of don't see the point in going to competitions that are only one style. I think in a martial arts tournament, you should compete against many different styles, because that is the real competition. Not just the other guys who are doing your same system. But there are many styles out there, and some are definitely more well-known than others, and this will be reflected in the background and knowledge of the judges. You only get 4 or 5 judges in a kata competition, and they only know what they have been trained in. So if none of them have experience in your system, it makes it more difficult for them to judge you fairly. If they are intelligent, and skilled, they should be able to recognize quality when they see it, even if they aren't familiar with the details, but not everyone can do that, and personal biases will always come into the picture. So competition is ALWAYS a very subjective situation, it can be frustrating, often is not fair (even tho the judges may be doing their best to be fair), and can be discouraging, especially for a child. So just understand this, if your son chooses to continue with competitions.
I used to judge and compete fairly regularly, and if you did it for any period of time at all you will run into a tournament where you get "home-towned." As a kenpo practitioner I've been hometowned by karate, TKD, and even another kenpo organization. It happens and it is unfortunate, but on most circuits it is fairly rare because it pisses people off and they don't come back. Alot of times small local tournaments are hurt by dominance of one style/org, and the judges lack experience of seeing what other systems do.
That said, as a judge, I would tend to favor a good complex form over a good simple form. And it does hurt beginners of certain systems, the kenpo Short 1/ Long 1 forms are extremely basic and don't necessarily stack well against the beginning karate forms. I would encourage to keep going to open tournaments, style-specific tournaments can get amazing dull and are often quite insular.
Lamont
I feel Blindside has made some very good points here but and it's a big but, I'm afraid in this instance we are talking about a 7 year old child who I think if they are to compete, providing they want to, they should compete with their club/school and with their own instructors support and blessing.
Children as young as this should not be doing complex forms, they should be doing basics. At this age I feel if they are to compete doing so in a competition within their style is probably the best way to go to start off. Certainly inter style comps are good but for a child just starting out as it seems to have happened in this case it can be very discouraging.
I'm also concerned about the child being alienated from his TKD school through his being taken to competitions on his own. He has no one to coach or support him with the martial arts knowledge he would need. I know the parents are going to be supporting him but to compete in strange competitions at only 7 is very stressful.
Children as young as this should not be doing complex forms, they should be doing basics. At this age I feel if they are to compete doing so in a competition within their style is probably the best way to go to start off. Certainly inter style comps are good but for a child just starting out as it seems to have happened in this case it can be very discouraging.
I'm also concerned about the child being alienated from his TKD school through his being taken to competitions on his own. He has no one to coach or support him with the martial arts knowledge he would need. I know the parents are going to be supporting him but to compete in strange competitions at only 7 is very stressful.
Hell, I was even home-towned in registration. The last time I tried to enter a tournament I (honestly) put down my martial art as JKD and Muay Thai and said that the t-shirt and Thai boxing shorts were the closest thing I had to a uniform. The tournament director said that I couldn't enter because that wasn't a proper traditional uniform and Thai boxing "is just street fighting. It's not a True martial art."
Yeah, whatever.
The point is that these things are designed to fulfill the expectations of the people who put them on. The rules are designed to give people just like them an advantage. The judges are conditioned through years and years to think of whatever they do as the standard by which martial arts should be judged. Most of the time it's as much a chance to pat themselves on the back as it is to compete in a sporting event.
If you're too far out of the mainstream it can be hard to even find judges who know what they're looking at. Three TKD referees, a Karate sensei and two Kenpo black belts will not have any idea about how to judge someone doing Kalaripayittu or Xing Yi. It's just not part of their training. And vice versa.
Yeah, whatever.
The point is that these things are designed to fulfill the expectations of the people who put them on. The rules are designed to give people just like them an advantage. The judges are conditioned through years and years to think of whatever they do as the standard by which martial arts should be judged. Most of the time it's as much a chance to pat themselves on the back as it is to compete in a sporting event.
If you're too far out of the mainstream it can be hard to even find judges who know what they're looking at. Three TKD referees, a Karate sensei and two Kenpo black belts will not have any idea about how to judge someone doing Kalaripayittu or Xing Yi. It's just not part of their training. And vice versa.
- Thread Starter
- #12
Thanks for the help everyone, it's much appreciated.I just hope we're in the right martial art for him. I have this little voice telling us to drop TKD and start over with karate.Whats the ultimate advantage of TKD over karate? Will he be better off in the end with TKD? Our hopes for him is to build self-confidence, gain discipline, and be able to take care of himself if he gets into a fight, especially at school.Should we forget the idea of competing at this age, should we just go to an all TKD tournament with his school next time? From what I could tell, the latter seemed to be the recommendation from the group.Thanks again!
The best martial art for your son is the one with the instructor and class that suits him! It could be karate, TKD or Judo or any other style. If he's happy in his TKD that's the style for him. He will learn eveything you want him to if he feels he fits in and he enjoys training. Leave it entirely to him and his instructor whether he competes, he will enjoy competing more I feel if he has his instructors and training partners around him at his age. Plenty of time when he's older to compete interstyle if he wants.
Do talk to his instructor though about what he's learning, what you'd like him to get out of his martial arts training and encourage him. Perhaps you could take it up too? Many parents have! stay on MT too, the people here will always answer your questions and are very nice!
Do talk to his instructor though about what he's learning, what you'd like him to get out of his martial arts training and encourage him. Perhaps you could take it up too? Many parents have! stay on MT too, the people here will always answer your questions and are very nice!
I have to say something now, I'm a 5th Dan Okinawa Karate and a 4th in Tae kwon do, to me it is not that much of a difference in the styles some stances are lower and wider but all in all compatible. The thing you really need to look at is, is he having fun and at the same time learning and does he enjoy his instructor if so leave him if not look else where. It is all about the instructor of the school and how he comes a cross with his students. As far as competition well it is just that a competition bad calls come in every sport and we learn to live with them, so treat a competition just like any other sporting event, sometimes the calls wil go your way and sometimes they will not.
I agree with basically everthing that the above posters have been saying, Tez, Terry, Flying Crane and Blindside. The one particular thing I want to emphasize here in connection with your question about TKD vs. Karate is that it's not really much of an either/or, because TKD is one of the Korean offshoots of Karate—I'd go further and say that it is (one avatar of) Korean Karate, just as Shotokan and Wado Ryu are two of the styles of Japanese Karate, and Gojo-Ryu and Shorin-Ryu are styles of Okinawan Karate. Karate is a very broad term, and basically encompasses all of those arts which can trace their ancestry—if we rely exclusively on well-documented history and reject myth, legend and wishful thinking—back to Bushi Matsumura and Anko Itosu. There is an almost complete overlap in technical content between TKD and Karate, with, as Terry points out, some small differences in execution at various points in any comparison between the two.
The crucial issue here as always is how the art is trained and how much emphasis is given to what in the school curriculum...
- Thread Starter
- #16
Again, thanks for the help and advice with all of this. Ultimately, he does enjoy TKD, I guess the tournament just made us question all of this. It just made TKD seem inferior to Karate.
The one thing he did seem to be interested in though was the weapons aspect of the tournament. His teacher says that he doesn't teach them because he doesn't want them taking that sort of thing to the playground and hurting someone.
That being said, how does he learn weapons if his school doesn't teach them? Is there some unofficial rule that says he can't go to another school for that part of his training? He seemed most interested in the bo, but is 7 too young to train with that, or with weapons in general for that matter?
Thanks everyone!
The one thing he did seem to be interested in though was the weapons aspect of the tournament. His teacher says that he doesn't teach them because he doesn't want them taking that sort of thing to the playground and hurting someone.
That being said, how does he learn weapons if his school doesn't teach them? Is there some unofficial rule that says he can't go to another school for that part of his training? He seemed most interested in the bo, but is 7 too young to train with that, or with weapons in general for that matter?
Thanks everyone!
xray, don't worry about that. TKD was the battlefield combat art of the RoK infantry and special forces in two major wars, and proved itself a military fighting skill system lethal enough to put sincere fear in South Korea's adversaries in those conflicts. Take a look here for details and documentation. So far as I know it's the only TMA to enjoy the status of having been the (terrifically successful) official combative system of a national military. So in terms of `street effectiveness', TKD has more than enough firepower. Properly executed, it's among the very `hardest' of power-based, hard-linear striking systems.
I will say this, though: TKD training in many places tends to deemphasize this aspect of the art, focusing instead on its Olympic-style sparring side, with a consequent change in both technical focus and approach to training. Karate, however, is far from immune to this `martial sport' trend; karate competitions are often huge affairs, and many of the methods that competitive TKDists use to score points in ways that will be very clear to the judges have been imitated in sport karate; high, complex kicks are now far more common in karate training and competition than they once were, for just this reason. But that's a separate question. As Terry and other long-time TKD instructors with extensive experience in Okinawan or Japanese Karate will tell you, both sides of the Karate family tree can be ferociously effective SD systems if you train them that way.
Again, it's true, as I suggested earlier, that the O/J kata, particularly the Okinawan forms in cases where there's a difference, are not only longer and more complex than the usual TKD hyungs, especially at the colored belt levels, but have more dramatic content. But one thing I've found: that alternation of kinetic intensity and rhythmically flowing performance is something that you can do with KMA hyungs as well. In effect, just as my own instructor has learned, and taught, a `Koreanized' set of Japanese kata, so the Korean patterns can be executed in a way which corresponds more to the rhythms of an actual fight, one which the disguised combat methods encoded in the hyungs correspond more clearly to than is usually the case with that very even pacing we've seen repeatedly in TKD hyung performances. This is something that your son can bear in mind. At this age and stage he should be doing, in a very literal way, what his instructor asks him to, but as he gets experience and knowledge under his belt, he may find himself tempted to experiment with a more karate-like execution style.
Finally, remember that tournament results don't, in themselves, mean anything necessarily all that important. Any competitive activity where you get points on style is going to encounter the kind of thing you're talking about. Good judges can judge technique, of course, but their scoring inevitably reflects personal preferences that you can't do anything about.
My own feeling, for what it's worth, is that the crucial value of hyungs, kata or patterns is the combat applications and interpretations they encode. I think of forms competition as a somewhat bizarre activity—as though a bunch of people were given calculus textbooks and told that in a month's time they were going to be tested on the material contained in the book, but when it came to the point, the test wasn't on their ability to solve mathematics/physics problems that tested your knowledge of the book's technical content. Instead, they were tested on their ability to memorize the prose parts of each chapter and declaim them in a suitably dramatic way, as though they were auditioning for a part in a play and the math book was the script. This is something I believe Tez was cautioning you about earlier; it's really true. If you learn the forms well, understand the movements involved, and work out the combat scenarios encoded in the forms, and train these well enough to use them... you're way ahead of any tournament forms medalist who has a mantlepieceful of trophies, but no clue how these forms relate to close-quarters self defense.
xray-
I'm in Illinois and there are TKD tournaments put on around here and I'm sure (hopeful!?) your son's instructor can tell you of them. I'm going to echo some whats been said previously and add some other comments:
I'm in Illinois and there are TKD tournaments put on around here and I'm sure (hopeful!?) your son's instructor can tell you of them. I'm going to echo some whats been said previously and add some other comments:
- At 7 years old make sure your son really wants to compete.
- Talk with his instructors. Hopefully they are approachable and not the stereotypical dictator instructor. You should feel comfortable approaching them with your questions and concerns. You the parent and writing the checks. You're concerns/questions are very important.
- I have trouble accepting the "doesn't want them taking that sort of thing to the playground". There is a place for weapons training at 7 (not swords or knives!) in my opinion. However, you can't go somewhere else just for that right now. If your staying at this school then stay only there for now. You can change and/or add something else when he is older.
Right, thats completely logical. I can teach you to kick and punch, teach you how to use the body weapons you take with you anywhere, but I question the students judgement enough that I won't teach them a weapon. Apparently it takes a genius to figure out how to swing a stick....
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