Your 14 to 16 year old teen has two routes to choose from for their next step in their martial arts journey. The route they take depends on their experience, size, and confidence, but we are happy to work with any kids and parents who have concerns or worries about their martial arts journey.

If your child is a fast grower, strong and confident, or has a lot of experience in martial arts and jiu jitsu, then there is no reason why they shouldn’t be training with adults. We make every effort to ensure proper safeguarding and pair them with other teens whenever possible. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu requires paired work and is very teamwork-oriented in that sense. When paired with adults, we’ve seen marvelous mentorships result as teenagers are often eager to learn from young adults as they make the difficult transition to the real world. Seeing someone just a few years older than them doing fine in the big scary world gives them a lot of confidence about life after school.

Alternatively, within our junior program, we have younger and smaller teens who thrive because they find themselves in a mentoring position in our younger programs. The younger students look up to them, and they develop their skills in communication and teaching until they feel confident enough to move up to our adult program. They continue to develop their skills further in the meantime to ensure they’re in the best possible place to advance. Often, kids in the modern school system don’t have an opportunity to interact and guide students younger than themselves, but it is an excellent precursor to adulthood responsibilities in which one has to think about something other than themselves. In that sense, we consider them a strong asset within our junior program.