Age: 7 - 12

When: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 5 - 6 pm

For us, we strongly believe that self-defense is a human right — especially for the smallest humans!

Like our adults program, our kids’ classes incorporate martial arts concepts from Krav Maga, Jiu-Jitsu, and MMA to help your child build and develop real-world skills to improve their lives at school and beyond.

Our curriculum covers a range of topics that include soft skills for both anti-bullying and anti-abduction (another tenet of our school is that most self-defense happens with observation and communication) as well as martial arts skills that we distinguish by context. Your child will learn and practice different skills for competition (should they want to compete), for defense against bullies / other children, and for defense against older kids / adults.

They’ll also learn the importance of communicating about self-defense incidents (both verbal and non-verbal) to the right, safe people after the fact.

We aim to keep classes fun, informative, and physical. Just like our adult program, we’re not focused on teaching kids a long list of techniques to memorize, but rather real world skills that are easy to replicate and practice, helping them advocate for them and their safety well past the childhood years. They’ll also learn how to do cool fighting things.

Classes are taught by ATX Tactics co-lead instructor Vanessa Swesnik, whose background as a classroom teacher, police officer, and martial arts enthusiast provide the unique skill set required to teach self-defense to children. She loves working with children of all ages and is excited to bring developmentally appropriate games and activities to this lively group of 7 - 12 year olds.