Martial-arts | Body Building Tools

Posts Tagged ‘martial-arts’

Headgear Martial Arts

Headgear Martial Arts
What age should full contact to the head be allowed?

I am just looking for personel opinions on this, or even answers based on medical knowledge. What is the minimum age that full contact to the head should be allowed in Martial Arts tournements or Kickboxing/MMA matches with and without headgear and pads?
My main purpose in asking this question is merely to get opinions on how young is too young to take repeated blows to the head.
Jessica K- No matter how good you are you will still get hit. You missed the point of the question.
My question does not so much involve experience level, because in most contests the fighters would have roughly the same experience level. My question is essentially how young is too young to take repeated blows to the head without protection.
Blasphem- What are you smoking? Do you even have a clue?

The American Medical Association or the New England Medical Journal ran an article on this in the early 90s while my wife was doing research in the area of neurosurgery. Needless to say my involvement in martial arts and competing made for some interesting conversations at some of the dinners and parties we would go to. One of the things that the article brought out was that any contact or trauma to the head of a child during their developmental years could cause problems in a number of areas both physically and mentally. Problems with balance and coordination, reaction time, visual acuity, ability to concentrate, and problem solve were all areas that various studies showed some correlation with trauma to the head. This is one of the reasons why contact to the head is not allowed in any of the under adult divisions by NASKA and the NBL in fighting irregardless of rank and that is just point fighting or sport karate. Kids do other contact sports where sometimes contact to the head is made, in particular football, which this article was very much against along with martial arts and the article really stressed no contact until in their later teens. Based on that as well as a few other things I think eighteen is really the age when maybe its alright and currently in IL if one amateur fighter wears a headgear in a kickboxing match-both must.

Oswego teen takes her boxing to next level
Next week, Megan Rembold, the Chicago Golden Gloves boxing champ, takes her boxing to another level, traveling to Hollywood, Fla., to compete in the Women's National Golden Gloves.