Beyond The Mat: Competitive Sport with Children and Adolescents in Judo, Sambo, BJJ, Luta Livre, Catch Wrestling, and Wrestling — A Handbook for Coaches and Parents

Beyond the MatCompetitive Sport with Children and Adolescents in Judo, Sambo, BJJ, Luta Livre, Catch Wrestling, and Wrestling — A Handbook for Coaches and ParentsEvery child who steps onto the mat learns more than throws and grips. They learn what the sport — and the adults around it — teach them about effort, failure, their own body, and their own worth. This handbook is for everyone who takes that responsibility seriously.Drawing on more than thirty years in the grappling arts and decades of work in communication and de-escalation, Jörg Brandt brings together developmental science, sport psychology, and hands-on coaching experience into one clear principle: long-term health comes before athletic development, and athletic development before any single result.Across thirty-two chapters, the book covers how young bodies and minds actually develop, where the limits of load lie, how motivation lasts, how to recognize and prevent trauma through wrong training, how to communicate on the mat, how to handle pressure — and how meditation and sport hypnosis can be used safely with minors.A practical, grounded guide for coaches and parents who want young athletes to come away from competitive sport stronger, healthier, and whole — not used up._________________________ About the AuthorJörg Brandt has been active in the grappling sports for more than three decades — as a competitor and as a coach. His experience extends across the whole breadth of the field to which this book is devoted: judo, sambo, luta livre, BJJ, catch wrestling, and wrestling. He holds, among other things, the black belt in luta livre and in further catch wrestling derivatives and is a certified sambo coach.Athletic and coaching activity have for him always run alongside each other and fertilize one another mutually. This double perspective — that of the active competitor and that of the instructor — shapes his view of combat-sport training as well as of competitive sport with children and adolescents.In parallel, Jörg Brandt has specialized over more than twenty years in civilian self-protection, communication, contact management, and de-escalation. This pedagogical and communicative competence flows directly into this book — everywhere it is about language, feedback, difficult conversations, the handling of pressure, and the protection of young people.Several specialist and nonfiction books have appeared under his name, among them Conflict Communication Under Conditions of Escalation, De-escalation as the First Line of Defense, You Are No Hero, and the in parts scientifically laid-out work Contact Management in Self-Protection.Beyond the Mat brings together the two red threads of his work: the long-standing practice in grappling and the interest in how people — precisely young people — develop healthily under load instead of breaking on it. Read more