Kato Karate reinventing itself in a new light

MANKATO, Minn. (KEYC) - Kato Karate has been busy at work in the middle of the pandemic to rebrand itself and become one of a kind in the state of Minnesota.

It was mainly motivated Kato Karate Owner Tim Flynn’s outlook on the activity.

Flynn explains a situation that has heard many times over and never truly understood which expedited the change from the Martial arts school to a child development school.

“Martial arts improves confidence, how, I don’t know it just does. So, that always bugged me and skillz was developed to make martial arts schools honest and so then we can actually back up everything that we say and do. We can prove how we build your child’s confidence and how we improve their discipline.”

They’ve achieved that accomplishment by reinventing themselves as a child development school, which helps the kids with not only their physical health, but their mental and emotional health as well.

One of the biggest ways that makes Flynn’s school unique is that he has a licensed psychologist on staff to help the students and the parents.

“I can send Jennifer a Facebook message or email saying ‘hey I had this issue, what tips can I give to this parent to work on that?’ Either she will give me a blog where she already addressed that issue before or just give me the answers so I can relay that back to the parent,” Flynn said.

This school uses martial arts as a learning tool to make their students become better people, and in that process they are doing more in-depth one on one evaluations to asses every single student in the program.

The program itself is called Top Skillz.

“Skillz, we focus on four areas of a person. We focus on their physical, intellectual, emotional and social stage of development. So, we use those four skills to enhance our students well being to make them a better person,” Flynn said.

With this move, Kato Karate becomes the only institution in the state to have this program and school up and running.

The program itself isn’t a new concept across the country and can be found in more populated cities like New York, Tampa and Los Angeles, along side 1,200 schools in 27 different countries across the world.

Kato Karate is proving slowly, but surely, that they are not a martial arts school anymore.

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