Train martial arts to improve the ability to concentrate
The mission of the extracurricular activities is to teach a new skill to the children or enhance one that they already have. There is a wide range and each of them has a different purpose. From enrolling a child in English classes to reinforce their language learning or some sports practice with which to encourage a more lifelike lifestyle active and less prone to sedentary lifestyle.
In fact some of these physical activities can also help reinforce intellectual skills. An example is martial arts, a practice that according to a study published in Frontiers of Psichology It allows children to improve their attention as well as their ability to react in the long term. An aid that allows to improve skills in the most demanding stages of education like the university.
Constant alert
For evaluate how the practice of martial arts could improve the capacity for concentration and long-term care, the researchers recruited a total of 48 adults. 21 of them had carried out exercises related to these activities or were still exercising them, while the other 27 had never started in them. All of them underwent tests in which their levels of care were measured.
On the one hand, the capacity of alert, notice a new stimulus, the orientation, focus attention on this new situation and its ability executive, choose the correct answer in the minimum possible time. A formula to determine the mental capacity of individuals and check how they could react to these situations.
Among all these capabilities, the researchers wanted to measure the alert capacity, which indicates a high level of concentration for react to changes. The results determined that the participants with experience in the field of martial arts showed a greater capacity for concentration in the three points and especially in the first, as a result of the constant attention to the attitudes of their opponent.
The practical applications of this attention capacity in the field of children is to follow the thread of a class with better results, or to study a syllabus. Often the explanation of the contents, or the resolution of exercises, it means a change in the line that is being followed. Adapting to that variation and responding effectively will allow reaching conclusions and being able to reason while maintaining.
Improve attention
In addition to martial arts, there are other activities to improve child care. From the Fundación Cantabria Ayuda al Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity or Foundation, CADAH, these activities are suggested with which to enhance this capacity at home:
- Thread balls of different colors in a fixed order. We will give you different models so that the child can reproduce them, grading their difficulty.
- The intruder. Four words are spoken or written to the child, one of which is not related to the rest. You must find out which one it is.
- Offer the child a leaf with many animals that resemble each other but have different characteristics, the child should round only those that we ask.
- Give the child a sheet with many online rounds. You should paint them the color you want, but going one by one, without skipping any.
- Offer a Rubik's cube and try to complete it.
Damián Montero
