The Intermediate Youth class is being restructured into levels based on a combination of age, experience, and skill. These levels will be denoted by the colour shirt the students wear.
I want to be clear that this is not the same as a belt system in traditional Asian martial arts. Those tend to be based purely on skill level, whereas ours is also based on age and experience.
These changes also do not affect the beginner class structure. Everyone joins our 10-week beginner program before joining the appropriate youth level.
The Youth class is now ages 11-18. Everyone shows up at the same time, does the warm up, and learns the drill of the day together, but then splits into their levels for sparring practice.
This will group students more like this:
11-12
13-15
16-18
The youngest two groups will continue to train with the padded weapons for 60 minutes. The oldest group will train with synthetic weapons (the ones the adults use) and will attend class for 90 minutes.
This extra 30 minutes at the end of class will allow us to go deeper into the lesson and work on more advanced material. This will also be a better step towards joining the adult classes later on.