The Premier Karate demonstration and competition team "Team DC" won 1^st place in the advanced mega team forms competition at the Twin Cities Open Karate Championships on 9/23/12.  We are very proud of our kids and appreciate the support of our parents!  At Premier Karate tournament competition is purely optional, it is for students that enjoy competition and want to learn sport karate techniques in addition to the strong Taekwon-Do fundamentals that they learn in their regular classes.  Our regular classes focus on developing physical fitness, realistic self-defense techniques while developing self-control, confidence and many other life skills.

I ran across a funny video on youtube about how internet safety.  The video begins with people being selected at random from the streets of a town in Europe.  They are asked if they would like to be in a future TV show featuring Dave, described as a gifted psychic.  Once they agree, they are ushered into a white tent to meet Dave.  Dave dances around and hugs the people to get a sense of their energy.  As the people are seated around him he tells them things about themselves that amaze them from their tatoos, color of their house, their banking information and much more.  

The...

I ran across a great article(click on the link)  that discusses the benefits of martial arts training for kids.  The article discusses the benefits for Autistic children, kids diagnosed with ADHD, kids who need to work on discipline, and more.  In my experience all kids benefit from the confidence building that martial arts training provides.  It also teaches kids perseverance which is an incredibly valuable skill.  From a physical perspective the martial develops flexibility and coordination which makes martial arts training one of the best cross training activities for kids that play other sports and I see that in my own kids and how it has helped them with baseball.  Have a great day, Mr. O'Neill

We have added another form video to the Andover Premier Karate & Martial Arts Academy youtube channel.  The Do-San form is used by kids ages 7 and above and adults who are high yellow belts, and by our advanced tigers (green and above).  This is great resource for students that want to practice their forms at home.

I wanted to alert all of our students and parents of Premier Karate to an interesting article I read from Consumer Reports that I read while waiting for my car to be serviced.  The article was on Facebook privacy and safety. The article delves into how Facebook uses your data and tracks all of your movements across the web.  It also discusses how Facebook can be used to stalk individuals.  In classes we talk about the ten evil warriors which is the 10 most common tricks that adults use to gain confidence of children to prey upon them, and one of the evil warriors is the Magician which seems to know everything about you and your family.  Guess what, the Magician tricks are also used against adults. ...