Spin Takes A Turn With ISRAEL21c

March 30, 2009 - 11:28 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Life, Pop Culture, Sports 

ISRAEL21c is now a contributor to SPIN Earth, a new web video initiative from SPIN Magazine. The first video up: a profile of the Israel Parkour Team, who use the sidewalks and walls of Tel Aviv as their training ground.

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Small belts

December 1, 2008 - 4:56 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: General, History and Culture, Life, Sports 

Israeli children participating in a karate activityOne of Israeli schoolchildren’s favorite methods of exercise is martial arts. Thai boxing, kickboxing and judo are enormously popular, and karate is also huge. For most Israeli karate instructors, the teen and adult sets represent a tiny minority of their teaching time, with littler ones taking up the lion’s share.

A recent piece in Ha’aretz examines the phenomenon in depth, exploring the question of whether children aged four or five truly have much to gain by studying the martial arts. Also noteworthy is a list of potential benefits from martial arts training, which include increased self-esteem, increased levels of fitness, development of a sense of competition, fostering a sense of self-discipline, garnering a healthy outlet for letting out aggression, and other types of increased spiritual grounding.

The article also notes that according to the 2000 Sport Law, all phys-ed instructors must be licensed as sports instructors, which has increased the demand for certification courses like those offered at the prestigious Wingate Institute. Located near Netanya, Wingate offers instructors’ training on a high level, with an emphasis on educational techniques (the institute also houses training programs and facilities for Israel’s internationally exported athletes, including our Olympians).

Picking a good teacher, though, can be as important a decision as choosing when to get your kid started – check out these guys:

“After one or two training sessions I can tell parents about their child’s problems if there are any,” says Arthur Gribetz, the chief Tora dojo trainer in Jerusalem, a method based on Japanese karate. Gribetz notes that karate training “is very systematic and it teaches students to feel the body and the breath,” and therefore also helps decrease excess muscle tension, improves motor skills, teaches distinguishing between left and right and more.”

Shalom Avitan, chairman of the Karate-Shotokan Association in Israel, says that any sport in which there is correct training, with the appropriate trainer, contributes to a child’s development, but the acquisition of self-confidence is not to be taken for granted. “Self- confidence is built up over time,” says Avitan. “It is necessary to train for at least a year and a half or two years to start to see results, and that on condition that the trainer is a professional and aware of the children’s needs. If you throw a small child into combat with children who are bigger and more experienced than he is, this isn’t going to contribute to his self-confidence,” he says.

So no, you can’t just force your children to wax the car, scrub the floor, paint the fence and hope that they’ll be champions after a few weeks.

Image courtesy Tomer.Gabel from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

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