Seasonal vs Year Round

Most team sports have a specific season which is fine. The only problem with this is what do the kids do in the "off" season. Many kids are not interested in multiple sports for various reasons. Many of the kids end up doing NOTHING in the "off" season and usually get into trouble if they are not kept busy. Martial Arts training is year round because it is a life style vs just an activity. Since team sports are seasonal, many of the skills are degradable when not consistently practiced. Martial Arts training requires consistency and is a skill building process.
Most team sports end once the school days are over. Martial Arts can be trained for a lifetime.

Improvement vs Winning

Everyone loves to win. It is just human nature. It is not realistic to believe one can win all the time at everything. In reality, we learn more from LOSING and winning too often can make one complacent and egotistical. Most team sports put too much emphasis on winning at all costs. Martial Arts training at American Kempo Karate Academy focuses more on improvement. We encourage students to get better from each experience. There is wisdom in the old adage that it is not whether you win or lose but how you play the game. If you train with the focus on learning and constantly improving, you can use this positive mind set in any area of one's life. Winning at the cost of having someone else lose is a path to self defeating behavior. A focus on improvement cultivates a "everyone can win" mentality that is useful in the real world. Creating win win opportunities is another way of creating harmony and sustainable balance in one's life and in the lives of others.

Participation

One of the greatest benefits of Martial Arts training over team sports is the fact that EVERYONE gets to "play" and no one sits on the bench. We hear parents complain constantly that their child never gets to play or play enough. Some of the reasons are very simple. First it is just a numbers game. Most team sports are so cheap to get into, that they get a huge influx of kids and they have only so many positions to fill and only so much game time. Second, and this is a tough one for people to accept, your child is most likely there to support the superstars of the given sport unless they really are a superstar. Think about who gets to play more often, the more talented players. Why, because they win games. Many times winning becomes the focus more than what they are learning in the process. In the real world, we learn more from losing. We learn from mistakes made so that we can perform better in the future. Winning all the time can make us complacent. A overwhelming desire to always win is very unhealthy, especially to a child. In team sports, someone has to lose. In Martial Arts, everyone can win while they are competing with themselves to constantly improve. Oneself is the greatest competitor.
Martial Arts is also year round and does not have to end after the seasons is over. What are the kids supposed to do for their team sport during the off season? If skills are not used, they get lost.