We, and other TKD schools, lose most students somewhere between green belt and blue belt. Why?

1. It gets harder;

• breaking gets more difficult e.g. reverse turning kicks
• you need leg and core strength to do a decent side kick in Won Hyo / Yul Gok / Joong Gun
  
• you need to demonstrate power in your patterns and speed/ agility in sparring
  

This all takes sustained effort, time, and will power.

2. People feel they’re not making progress;

• it takes longer between gradings
  
• you ‘learn’ a new pattern quickly, but still can’t grade
  
• it looks like people of lower grades are catching up with you
  

You are making progress - leg and core strength, flexibility, timing, power, agility, accuracy of targeting in set sparring and free sparring are improving week by week – but it’s subtle.

Lower grades may appear to be catching up but will also get stuck at green / blue stripe / blue belt.

Sometimes they really are catching up with you and may overtake you, (because they’re younger /older, more flexible etc), but so what?

Sometimes parents are anxious about the rate of progress their child is making. Every child will progress at their own pace due to differences in:

• Age
  
• Innate ability (have they got the 'sporty gene')
• Concentration span
• How often they train
• How interested they are in progressing
• Whether or not they practice at home
• If they have older siblings / parents who do it
• If they are learning other sports or activities at the same time.
• General motivation
• Learning disability
• Physical disability

At Wirral UKTA, when a grading comes up, some people will be ready, others won't. Usually only a handful at a time grade. For this reason any child not ready to grade need not feel left out or different from the others as they will be in the majority NOT grading.

A child who is slower to progress may notice that others who started after them are beginning to overtake them. To avoid the child losing self-confidence if this happens, parents can explain it to them using some of the reasons above, i.e “He's learned it faster as he's older than you” or “She has a older brother who helps her at home” “They come more often than you” etc. Kids are quite happy with these explanations.

If a child is slow progressing, its important for the parent not to pressure them, its best that parents don't ask the instructor if their child is ready, in front of the child. Better to ask when the child is not around or by phone or email. Parents could also ask how they can help their children at home and instructors are only too willing to explain points to help them with, as long as the child is willing.

If a sensitive child is making slow progress, it is important that parents don't try to put their child in for a grading against the instructors advice. Failure is far worse than just not being put in for it. The main thing is that the child enjoys taekwon-do.

To put things in perspective, I had one child who took a year to get to yellow tag, and another student who spent 7 years on one belt colour. They both enjoyed it and kept coming and they both moved up to the following grades a lot faster.

Don't feel as though belt colour is everything, its not. Children can be given encouragement and praise for improvements made along the way, such as mastering a particular kick or improving their balance.

Of course every parent knows their own child best, but in my experience as a teacher and instructor for many years, and as a parent myself, when parents are laid back about it, kids take it all in their stride but when parents become hung up and anxious about gradings, kids do the same.