Competition Team

Covid is over, and we are finally ready to start competing again!  We are excited to bring back our competition team and strike out and against other schools to help us grow.  We have always firmly believed that the growth you gain from martial arts is internal, but that doesn’t mean we can’t grow through competition as well!  Some of our 4S Ranch and Rancho Bernardo kids grow best through competition, everyone is different!

Gaining self-confidence to perform in front of others when the stakes are high, a great way to prepare kids for the challenges of high pressure situations later in life!

“Competing against fellow students as well as students from other schools and styles is a great way to judge your skills as a martial artist.  When training with the same people of the same style, you become too comfortable with your level.  In competition, you get to test yourself not only physically, but mentally.” -Dominic Califano, 2nd Degree Black Belt

Learning to work as a team!  Many of our practice sessions involve working with multiple partners to practice material, help critique each other and push each other to win.

Learning what it takes to win and how to handle loss are important skills for any student.  It’s also healthy for adults to have something to focus on winning outside their work environment.

It’s not about belts, we believe achieving your black belt is a huge accomplishment, but then what?  Are you going to quit?  Do you really feel you have reached the peak of your abilities?  Competing keeps your training fresh.  4S Ranch martial arts classes are hard to miss when you are worried about how you’ll look at a tournament.

Currently, we have two major competitions we do every year.  The 4S Ranch Summer Showdown has been an inter-school tournament between our school and Encinitas for the last 8 years.  We also compete regularly at the Golden Dragon Tournament in Los Angeles.  We actively look for other competitions to compete in locally as well. Our 4S Ranch Competition Team wants more tournaments to attend!  If you are hosting a tournament, please invite us!

One thing about our competition team, we are very diligent about how we compete.  Tournaments have lots of different judges who may all have different opinions, we require the tournaments we compete at to have their rules listed in advance in thorough detail.  We aren’t sending our kids in just to have a good time.  We are teaching our 4S Ranch kids focus by making sure they study up on the rules and practice the right material.  Going to a tournament and losing because you weren’t the best is one thing, we aren’t going to give our kids a bad experience by competing somewhere disorganized, without rules, and just trying to get that tournament fee.  We want our 4S Ranch Competition Team to feel educated, prepared, and well-trained to compete.  

Our main system up to black belt focuses on self-defense and sparring/kickboxing/catch wrestling.  Our 4S Ranch Competition Team will compete in any art or area we have done in the past.  The classes are held separately from the normal classes and require commitment like you would expect from any competition.  Some things we have competed in the past are:

WEKAF Stick Fighting angle, double and team events

• Kung-fu Forms (Northern, Southern)
• GI Grappling
• Continuous Fighting
• Point Fighting 
• Weapons Forms
• Self-Defense Techniques
• Two Man Forms

Don’t worry!  You don’t have to compete if you don’t want to.  Our martial arts school keeps our self-defense/kickboxing program separate from the 4S Ranch Martial Arts Competition Team.  But we do encourage students to participate if we feel like it will help them grow.   We will also help you select which event and level to compete at.  We aren’t the type of school to just send quantity over quality, we want each student to get the most out of each competition.  That way, our martial arts kids can focus on getting better.