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2017/07/11

Karate vlog #78: kids kumite by height, not weight


Today's topic is kumite weight divisions versus kumite height divisions for kids, should a kids sparring be done by weight or height?

And what we're going to do for the BC Winter Games for 2018 when karate is part of it
is we're going to do it by height, that's right, karate is more of a reach, speed, reaction type of sports then for example judo or wrestling which are more like weight and power and throw down type of
sports.

So how are we going to do it?

Well, we'll send out the applications to all the areas that are gonna be applying for this for the BC Winter Games, who is 12/13 years old let's be done in any type of competition and everyone entering will enter in their height, then we receive all the information, we'll average it all
out and we'll take a shorter division and a taller division, I don't want to
come up with anything hilarious nicknames, with that will make
it quite even so that kids are competing instead of three weight divisions it'll be
a taller and a shorter division and a little bit more equal.

One thing I think is great about this is it concentrates on that reach and that explosion, okay,
and that's the longer distancing being used and also discourages kids doing any
weight cutting, you know you can't get any shin implants and you can't push
your hair up so this is going to be a great way for everybody to experience
how to get better and not have to think about where the weight is or how we can
fit their weight in okay.

If you have one of these awesome posters that was made by Karate Canada and it's the LTAD, long
term athlete development model, one side talks about, they made this maybe five years ago, one side talks about the different stages I think this is on the Karate Canada website.

But on the other side of the poster okay they have here different ways to measure how people are
developing, especially kids, and as it goes through puberty, but the cool thing is other than lots of information they have let's if I can get it just right it's have a scale so we've done is Kraig
Devlin the national coach in the club, he got me mounted on some boards and then he hung
them so we can measure everybody exactly so it says so for us it's on a wall and when kids come in we want to size up got both of them side by side when kids come in we can size them up for their different uniforms, and then for tournaments and even in-house tournaments we can size them up and then split them up.

It's really easy if you're just having a club event just line everybody up in height, you know tallest to shortest, and then split them up and now you have some equal divisions so it's great for encouraging kids not to think about cutting weight, it's great for encouraging what karate is like a reach
and that's speed and it also allows something new where they're going to feel oh hey this is kind of more for me people my division will be about more on my size.

Because now people come in all shapes and sizes that you know I'm sure everybody out there is seeing someone is really really tall against someone even a head smaller and yet they're in the same division and it could even be a similar weight, so yeah kids sparring divisions done by height instead of done by weight.

I'm Richard Mosdell, hope that's interesting for you feel free to put in
some comments and thanks a lot for watching!