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Teaching Success and Building Character instilling core
life skills that will enable our students continued success
on their path of life!
Mr. McDaniel and our instructors have developed a
multi-pronged approach over the last 30 years to teach these
life skills to kids in a safe and productive environment.
Through development in these five areas (in addition to the
physical training in TKD) our students become well-rounded,
humble yet confident individuals with the necessary life
skills to achieve.
Physical Fitness
With over 2/3 of all
children clinically overweight and fully 1/3 fall into the
obese category it is vital that kids get involved in a
physical activity that will give them good fitness skills
for life. Through the study of TaeKwon-Do your child
will increase their range of motion (flexibility), stamina,
muscle tone and balance. Our organic curriculum at our
school allows each level to build upon the accomplishments
of the last, leading the students towards great physical
fitness with each belt. In addition, they will learn
all this in a way that will develop good diet and athletic
habits that they will carry with them the rest of their
life.
Moral Culture
Arrogance is
self-confidence with an absence of humility. Through
stressing the Tenets of TaeKwon-Do and working with the
students to incorporate them into their everyday lives we
strive for our students to become highly self-confident yet
humble in their approach to others. Humility should
not be mistaken for passivity. In this context
humility represents meeting our own needs without arrogantly
proclaiming our worth over another, or putting our lesser
need over a greater need of another.
Center
Center is an Aikido and/or Zen concept. At its core it
is the practice of not reacting to things from either a
rigid or passive state of mind or from a rigid or passive
physical state (in the event of a physical confrontation).
This allows the student to address the situation calmly and
with an open mind. From a place of center we become
neither the aggressor nor the victim. The students are
also encouraged to use this concept in their academic
studies to facilitate a broader view of topics.
Goal Setting
When reviewing what sets
leaders apart from the masses, repeatedly cited as a key to
the leader’s success is their ability to set goals and
obtain them. The method that we use to instruct
TaeKwon-Do teaches the students how to set goals, define
milestones and develop transitional plans to move from one
milestone to the next in steady progression towards their
end goal.
Self-Defense
No martial arts program
would be complete if it did not teach its students to defend
themselves. At the American Martial Arts Center we
stress that TaeKwon-Do is for Self-Defense only and should
never be used outside of that context. We in still
in our students that once a conflict becomes violent someone
will get hurt and that can never be undone. The
physical aspects of our self-defense system are based on
easy, straightforward techniques, with special emphasis on
teaching the principle of the technique. This way the
student can apply it should they find themselves outside of
the pre-scripted circumstances we practiced the technique in
class. Above all else we teach situational awareness,
instructing the student to understand their environment and
how to do a risk assessment of their current situation to
best prepare themselves should they need to defend
themselves. It is unfortunate but necessary in these
violent times.
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