by Gary Cain

Created on: March 13, 2009   Last Updated: March 23, 2009

When he walked up behind her between high school classes, he merely intended to surprise his girlfriend by putting his arm around her neck in order to give her a hug. Instead, the surprise was his when she, instinctively reacting after a decade of martial arts training, grabbed his arm and flipped him over her shoulder onto the rock-hard floor. That was the last time her then boyfriend ever snuck up on my older daughter from behind.

Like most fathers with daughters, I worried about their safety and well-being as they were growing up. Since there are lots of crazy people out there in the big, bad world, I was concerned whether my girls would be able to take care of themselves if they ever found themselves in a difficult situation. Looking back, now that they've safely made it through their teens, I can strongly recommend the Kenpo karate training that they received for the beneficial role it played in their development and ongoing safety.

When my older daughter, now 23, was in the second grade, possibly due to having watched the Power Rangers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoons, she decided she wanted to learn martial arts. Figuring that karate would be a good form of exercise, at the very least, my wife and I signed her up for lessons at a Kenpo karate studio near our house. A few years later, our younger daughter, now 20, having watched many of her sister's classes, requested that she, too, join the karate program. Being quite pleased with our older daughter's results and progress, we signed the younger one up as well.

To their great credit, the karate studio's instructors did such a fabulous job keeping the classes fun, interesting, and enlightening that my girls stayed with it for many years. Both daughters willingly continued with the training program until finally leaving home for college, earning a total of 5 black belts (junior, teen, and adult) between them.

The benefits of taking karate classes for so many years were far more than just getting belts. Karate training played a positive role in several areas as they grew and developed. For example:

Physical Strength

Probably the most direct benefit was due to the regular exercise they performed in the 2 to 3 classes per week, year around, from elementary through high school. There was no way my kids could have become couch potatoes with the regular jogging, strength training, punching, kicking, flipping, and blocking they did over those years. As they got older and approached the black belt tests for

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