2024 YOUTH Programs

Join the Grasshoppers Club for an awesome time of playful explorations of movement through Martial Arts. Practice is led by Bo, a former I-Power Gymnastics NINJA Program Director who brings 40+ years of Martial Arts practice and teaching experience to create an outstanding physical, mental, and emotional fitness program. The Grasshoppers Club classes are student-centered, exploratory in format, with the goal to accelerate learning and enhance practical skills while also improving Mental Agility & Adaptability. Practice includes partner work, individual and group challenges, and more.

Let me begin with the most important question any Parent and Student would ask: why join the Grasshoppers Martial Arts Club?

For starters, my aim is to give Grasshoppers Students a ridiculously unfair advantage when facing conflicts and challenges - be those emotional, mental, or physical. Our practice revolves around problem-solving, acute awareness, strategy, critical thinking, mutual respect, and physical, emotional and mental empowerment.

This comes with the responsibility to provide our students with non-diluted skills and know-how. The idea behind this approach is that one single hour of proper training is better than a full year of entertaining - and expensive - classes with little applicable value. After all, it is Martial Arts that we practice - albeit at a higher level then the overwhelming majority of current schools. For instance, if I did not teach Martial Arts, I would rather give my own kids a single month of Boxing training and receive better benefits than putting them through a year of loud martial arts wrapped in colored belts and sealed with a bunch of certificates and trophies. 

That's because when you respect students as the future adults they are in the process of becoming (regardless of what it is they practice), you can only choose a path of responsible teaching, profound attention to individual details, and a teaching methodology centered on the characteristics and abilities of your students. This is as valid for Martial Arts as it is for Painting, Ballet, or Cooking.

It is a bold statement and I invite you to observe or take a class before labeling it as arrogance.

This training combines Martial Arts principles, games, and even storytelling along with strength and endurance using body weight training through natural movement games, puzzles, patterns, and complex spatial awareness challenges to enhance agility, flexibility, coordination, and adaptability. Younger kids begin through a more basic exploration of movement, obstacles, and basic acrobatics. Students can also combine tracks and participate in both the OpenMAT Martial Arts classes AND the Tumbling & Groundwork classes for a well-rounded physical training.

At the core of our practice is Mutual Respect and Nonviolent Conflict Resolution.