Your Teen's Brain on Jiu Jitsu

First, before we even start this long article, an admission-

I HATE when people talk about the mental health benefits of martial arts in a sort of medicalised way, or as a cure-all for mental health issues. Of course, Jiu Jitsu can help with stress relief, or with certain symptoms of anxiety, for example, but there is a tendency to overstate the effects of training. For some Jiu Jitsu guys, training is a cure for depression, anxiety, obesity, drug and alcohol abuse, and just about anything else going.

I don’t doubt that Jiu Jitsu training can help in certain circumstances, alongside other interventions, but it’s a dangerous thing to say; “here’s the cure to your complex needs!”

Now that’s not to dismiss it either. Many a person has changed their life with Jiu Jitsu. But I doubt Jiu Jitsu was the catalyst in these scenarios. More the vehicle. There’s an old martial arts saying- “When the student is ready, the master appears”. I think that probably applies here.

But there is something interesting in the area of Youth mental health and martial arts outcomes. In particular for what I would have always termed toughness, but of late I prefer to use the more commonly accepted resilience. The reason being that the former always gave the impression that it was related to physical toughness, although I never meant it that way. I’ll give you one study from Australia that I read recently to go along with my own personal views.

Teen mental health is not, in general, pathological, and we run the risk of overstating quite a bit of normal teenage angst and moodiness. There is a label culture running through social media aimed at kids. Teen influencers compete with each other for likes, telling kids “10 signs you’re bipolar” or “You might have an eating disorder if you do this thing…” As parents, we’re all a bit afraid we’ll miss something that might end up being a worst case scenario, or even just effect a kid’s grades.

My personal view is that we talk our way into bad mental health sometimes through hyper-focusing on labels and viewing normal negative behaviours as “symptoms”. Listening in to some conversations on this matter can seem like a sort of parent group Munchuasen’s-by-proxy sometimes.

But back to the point!

But we can probably all agree that we’re working with mainly normal kids who are just navigating the transition to adulthood, and doing so in a fairly confusing and uncertain world. In this case, I really think Martial Arts has a role to play. In many ways, it’s the perfect hobby for a kid to take up. It’s physical and mental, it’s individual but you work in a social group, and it’s got a fairly rigid code of discipline and respect.

There’s concern worldwide, and there’s been a lot of studies on how we can increase resilience in young people. From art and creativity, to locking phones in pouches during school days, to sleep quality and dark-mode screens. They probably all have a role to play, but this is a Jiu Jitsu Blog, so let’s look at that Australian study I mentioned earlier.

In this, they took a group of 12-14 year olds and enrolled them in a 10 week martial arts programme. The control group did no martial arts training. They assessed resilience markers at the end of the period, and found “robust evidence that student’s resilience can be improved using martial arts-based interventions delivered in school settings.” Pretty clear, according to them, and if you read any journals, you’ll know that the word robust isn’t used lightly.

Of course this seems obvious to me and to anyone who works with young people, it’s just nice to see the rest of the world noticing it.

Resilience isn’t the only thing it helps of course. It’s an alternative lifestyle too. It’s about training with your mates, and travelling to tournaments together, and working with adults who care about your progress. It’s away from the street and out of your bedroom. It’s off the phone for a while and the endless scrolling through brain-rot.

There’s a lot more to it too, but we’ll save that for another article.

See you on the mat,

Barry

Ps. If you want to start your kid, we have Teens classes enrolling all the time. Just get in touch. We also have a Teens MMA Summer Camp coming up.