Pritchard's Martial Arts Bangor

PMA Kickboxing Bangor - has a new 2nd dan blackbelt 🥳
congratulations Emma Gove! After a gruelling belt exam she was awarded her 2nd Dan this morning great work 💪🥊

Awesome weekend of martial arts!
we had the honour of hosting the annual Royce Gracie Jiu Jitsu seminar PMA Jiu Jitsu Bangor, thanks to Chris Pritchard Pma for the opportunity to have Royce visit our school 🙏

Congratulations to some of the gang for their promotions;

Geraint Jones- 3rd stripe
Jamie Boyd- blue belt
Jamie Bach- purple belt

The kickboxing team’s group photo after a 10 round sparring session 😁 awesome, awesome, awesome 🤩

Great work to Harry Stevens from our Juniors 7+ programme on earning the star of the day award at tonight’s class 💪 well done sir

The karate kids from our 4-6 & 7+ kids programmes with their buddies at our board breaking “goal setting” seminar today at the academy- congratulations kids 😁👍

I want to talk about something most people don't say out loud:
The confidence gap.

It's the distance between who your child is right now and who they're capable of becoming.

And here's what makes it complicated:
That gap doesn't close on its own, it doesn't close with reassurance, though reassurance matters. It doesn't close with praise, though praise has its place. It doesn't close with time, though people keep hoping it will.

It closes with evidence.

Specific, personal, earned evidence that your child collects through experience; not through being told.

Here's what that evidence looks like:
The first time they walked into a room full of strangers and survived it.
The first time they got something wrong in front of everyone and tried again anyway.
The first time they did something hard, genuinely hard and felt the specific, electric pride of someone who didn't quit.

Each of those moments deposits something into an account inside them, an account that says — I can. I did. I will.

And when that account is full enough?
The confidence gap closes, not because someone gave them confidence, but because they earned enough evidence to believe in themselves without needing anyone to convince them.

Your job as a parent isn't to be the only one that can give your child confidence, it's to put them somewhere they can build the evidence for themselves.
That's the right environment, the right people, the right challenges all delivered with enough support that they feel safe to fail and enough expectation that they feel compelled to try.

That environment exists.
And it's closer than you think.

💬 What would closing the confidence gap mean for your child's life right now whether that's at school, with friends or at home?

From helping hundreds of people like you, there's probably a story you've been telling yourself.
It goes something like this.

I used to be fit, I used to have energy and I used to feel really good about myself.
But that was then. Life got busy and then things changed.
I'm not that person anymore.
And maybe I never will be again.

You've told it so many times now that it doesn't even feel like a story but more like it feels like a fact.

But here's what we know about that story:
It's not a fact and it's a conclusion you drew from a chapter that isn't finished yet.
We've watched hundreds of people walk through the door carrying that story.

The 47-year-old who hadn't trained since his twenties and was convinced his body was done.
The woman who'd spent a decade telling herself she was too far gone with her fitness to start.
The man who'd tried four gyms, quit four gyms and decided that fitness wasn't for him and that was just who he was.

Every single one of them have been wrong, not because training with us is magic, but because the story changes the moment you do something that contradicts it.

The moment you show up when you said you would.
The moment you finish something you thought you couldn't.
The moment you walk out of a class tired and sore and somehow more alive than you've felt in years.

The story doesn't change because you decide it should, it changes because you do something that makes the old version impossible to keep believing.

That's what resilience actually is – it's refusing to accept it.

It's the quiet, stubborn decision to keep writing the story even when the last chapter was really hard.

Especially then.

💬 What's the story about yourself that you've been telling for so long it feels like truth — but you're not sure it actually is anymore?

You've asked three times and you're about to get mad because you're about to ask a fourth.

And somewhere between the first ask and now, you've gone from calm to frustrated to something that feels uncomfortably close to defeated.
Not because you're doing it wrong, but because you're the only one doing it.

Here's what nobody prepares you for about raising a disciplined child:
You can't want it more than they do.

And right now, in the middle of the homework battle, the screen time argument, the "why do I have to" conversation — they don't want it at all.

That's not a character flaw, that's a child who hasn't yet felt the reward that discipline delivers.

Children become disciplined when they experience in their body, in real time, what it feels like to do the hard thing and come out the other side proud of themselves.

That feeling is addictive.

But they have to feel it somewhere first.

💬 What's the daily discipline battle that's wearing you down the most right now? Homework? Screens? Attitude?

She hadn't recognised herself in years, not in a dramatic way or in a way anyone would have noticed from the outside.

From the outside she had it together:
Good job. Nice home. People who loved her.

But inside, in the quiet moments when nobody was watching, she felt like a passenger in her own life.
Like somewhere along the way, the version of herself she'd always meant to become had just stopped being pursued.

Not because of one big thing, but because of a thousand small surrenders.

The dream she quietly shelved. The opinion she swallowed to keep the peace. The thing she'd always wanted to try but never quite got around to because the timing was never right and she was always needed somewhere else first.

She was 44 when she walked through our doors.

Told us she felt ridiculous and said she didn't know why she was there. Said she'd probably hate it and leave.

She didn't leave.

What she told us three months in has stayed with us:
She said training was the first thing in years that was entirely hers.
Not for her kids, not for her job and not for anyone who needed something from her.

It was just hers.

And in that space, that one hour, twice a week — she started remembering who she was before she became everything to everyone else.
The woman who had opinions, who had energy and who didn't apologise for taking up space.

She wasn't finding a new version of herself, she was finding the original one.

The one who'd been waiting both patiently and quietly — for someone to finally come back for her.
Six months later she told us something that made the whole room go quiet.
"I like myself again."

Four super powerful words.

But anyone who's spent time not liking themselves knows exactly how much those four words weigh.

💬 When did you last do something that was entirely, unapologetically yours? Not for anyone else. Just you?