Self-Defence for Kids & Teenagers

A tragic truth of the Modern World is how it seems to get (or at least feel) more dangerous with each passing week, and moreover, also affecting us at younger and younger ages. Even if we set aside the current high-profile social issues surrounding knife crime, gang violence and (mercifully rare) rampage attacks with mass casualties, children have always been subject to the mundane - but immensely impactful - shittiness of other children: name-calling, pushing & shoving & hitting, intimidation, and a litany of other unpleasant behaviours that all fall under the broad umbrella of ‘bullying’. So the inevitable question arises in the mind of the concerned parent: “what can I do to help my child?” - a question my own parents asked of themselves some 25 years ago, and one that I feel we might be able to answer via age-appropriate self-defence training…

It is worth emphasising from the get-go that in teaching self-defence, and martial arts more generally, to children, we are not seeking to make them into violent people. A common, and frankly tedious, criticism that martial arts instructors of all styles encounter is that all we do is teach kids to settle their differences by fighting, apparently in the mistaken belief that by simply renouncing physical force we will cure society of all that ails it. This is simply wrong: there will always be individuals who will set out to prey upon those they see as weaker than them, and wishing this sad fact away does not, in fact, make it so - it is an inevitable, regrettable, facet of human nature. Of course, this is no less true for adults - the calculus is the same. So while, yes, we do teach kids, teenagers & adults how to deploy physical violence in their own defence against the assorted predators of the World, and when it is justifiable to do so, the deeper and most essential objective is actually to avoid needing to ever use it.

Use of force is the most visible aspect of what we do in self-defence, but there is great value in, say, teaching a shy teenager how to throw a solid punch and when that action might be appropriate, that goes far beyond the mechanics of it. Primarily, it boils down to curing one of the fear of fear. The notion of being a victim of violence, the mere threat of it even, can be enormously debilitating, more so if you have already been on the receiving end of it. I can speak to personal experience the sense of powerlessness that comes from feeling like another person could easily impose their will upon you, because you lack any meaningful answer to their aggression. By learning self-defence - mastering its techniques and tactics, developing your body and its physical capabilities, perhaps even overcoming the stress and pain and frustration of a particularly challenging drill of the sort we love in the Krav Maga world - you find that now you do in fact have an answer to that external aggression. Having the capacity to hold your own and stand up for yourself against a would-be aggressor is enormously empowering, even if you never have the misfortune of needing to call upon it. And once you possess that capacity, it bleeds into all the other arenas of your life, allowing you to advocate for yourself more generally - your beliefs and values, your rights and your dignity, your unique needs and wants as an individual - against others who would seek to undermine or simply disregard these things for their own benefit. Physical violence is the ultimate form of coercion, so once an individual is equipped to deal with this, all the lesser methods by which people attempt to take advantage of others become less daunting, and easier to stand against. This is what we mean when we say that learning self-defence is confidence-building: it all stems from developing the capacity to adequately respond to violence imposed upon you, and thus developing the confidence to stand up for yourself in the main.

While building this confidence to navigate a sometimes menacing world is the primary benefit of learning self-defence, it is by no means the only thing we gain from the practice. And while the following absolutely apply to adults as well, I’d argue it’s even more true for children and teenagers, in the most formative years of their lives. In our training, we develop resilience and perseverance; the capacity to try & fail with grace, learn, improve & persist & eventually master difficult things. We instill the joy and pride of success, when these challenges are overcome and we can see in ourselves tangible progress. It’s so easy for young people to be deeply discouraged by set-backs in life, to internalise it as a personal failing which can subsequently poison their entire self-image, leaving them to believe themselves to be good-for-nothing losers. Indeed, this self-loathing often manifests in the outwards aggression of the kind we endeavour to arm ourselves against. It might seem hyperbolic, but exactly this thought-process infected people close to me, and me too, in my own way. It’s crucial to have an activity such as martial arts where the consistent small wins can reinforce one another and gradually build up the self-esteem of the young practitioner, and thus the belief in themselves to conquer the inevitable challenges of life more broadly. Hopefully no child I teach will ever need to deploy their skills in fending off a violent attack, but they will inevitably encounter a more prosaic challenge, be it academically, personally or professionally, that will demand the grit and determination developed in their martial arts training in order to see the challenge through to a satisfactory conclusion.

Krav Maga is excellent exercise, building fitness, stamina, mobility and strength all at once. The intensity of it is a fantastic outlet for the seemingly-infinite energy of youth, and also a great way to vent one’s frustrations in a safe and appropriate manner. I would argue that martial arts are a great fit for the less classically-athletic child, getting them to experience the joy of movement and exercise without the baggage of team sports at school. For example, I was always the kid that got picked last at football and promptly shoved in goal where I was effectively ostracised from the fun, and it soured me on sports and physical activity more broadly well into adulthood, but in our world there is none of that. Everyone participates, and everyone sweats & learns & grows & has fun doing it. This brings me to the last key benefit of self-defence training and martial arts generally for kids and teenagers: while on the face of it it’s a solo activity, we still train together as a group, and so build our own little community of fellow practitioners, founded on this shared interest and mutual respect. Society is atomised enough as it is, and with kids spending ever more time inside and online, this real-life connection with their peers (and especially with the long traumatic tail of the Pandemic) is absolutely invaluable.

In conclusion, self-defence training for children and teenagers is about so much more than just giving young people a proverbial sword with which to defend themselves against violent individuals out there in the Real World (TM). It’s about giving them tools for life more generally: resilience, grace and determination. It’s about giving them a community of flesh-and-blood peers rather than digital avatars interacted with in the lonely solitude of the home. It’s about giving them self-respect & dignity & the pride of struggles overcome (tempered with the gentle humility of understanding that one can always has further room to grow), so they can look at themselves in the mirror and see someone with strength and value. You can’t put a price on these things…

All blog posts are reflective of the private opinions of the author, and are not to be considered as an officially-held position of any organisation, including the IKMF and Pentagon Krav Maga. Pentagon Krav Maga, the IKMF and the author will not held be liable for any action or inaction taken by a third-party as a result of this article.