Here, at the York Academy of Martial Arts, our children and youth karate classes offer an outstanding mix of traditional principles with practical real world skills, which meet the needs of today’s kids, while at the same time keeping the classes fun and exciting. Students in this program develop their bodies, minds and spirits through training their fundamental blocking, punching, kicking, and grappling techniques as well as traditional karate forms. In addition they learn to use their hearts and minds by cooperating with partners, thinking their way through drills and learning self defense concepts.

Classes are loaded with confidence and self esteem developing drills, as well as stress release drills and challenging games. Overall our program takes a traditional approach to developing the important ’self’s’ of the child: Self Discipline, self confidence, self esteem, self control, self motivation and self image, while at the same time providing a fun and motivational form of physical exercise. Whether you have the next Karate Kid on your hands or you are just looking for something to help save the furniture by getting junior to work out here, our program will work to help get the parents what they want and give their children what they need.

Due to our two large training spaces and our team of over 40 dedicated helpers and certified adult instructors, all of our children's classes can be broken down by age AND skill level. This means your child will always be well looked after by adults and surrounded by peers, which is not what you will find everywhere. There is no 'best age' to get started, although we advise all parents of young children to let us assess their child's readiness to learn if they are looking to start them at around 4 years of age. The best time to get started is right now! Since your interest has taken you this far, you are welcome to try out one of our regular classes for FREE anytime, why not contact us today?

Our  program focuses on three primary areas to help students better understand and deal with personal violence: Creating awareness of the main types of bullying including physical, verbal, social and cyber-bullying; informing them of the appropriate response choices that they have to be able to deal with their particular situation; as well as teaching and roll playing various soft skills to avoid their becoming targets for violence and to effectively resist the most common types of assault.

Of course there is no getting away from the need to work hard when learning to protect yourself. Through the creative use of focus pad, punching bag, target and partner clinch take-down and grappling training we make sure that by the end of the class the children are all Fit, Focused and have had Fun! All of this material is presented as a regular part of our classes on an ongoing basis, but from time to time throughout the year we will  offer special clinics and seminars for those who want to go further into more advanced situations and drills that are not covered in the regular program or as a separate course for people who only want to take a self-defense course.

You can also have us come to your school to present the B.R.A.V.A. Program for kids of theTeen Defender Program for youth, just use thecontact us form and ask for more information.