Monday night, we gathered a room full of Atlanta’s leaders for our annual supporters dinner. Investors, executives, attorneys, nonprofit veterans, advocates — and our full board. And somewhere between dinner and dessert, Dr. Kimberley Lakes said something that reframed everything we do.
Dr. Lakes is a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience who has spent her career studying child development — specifically what happens when children get the right support during the years that matter most. She has served more than 3,000 families through her research clinic and spent the past decade on faculty at one of the country’s leading medical schools. She wasn’t there to give us a gold star. She was there to explain the science.
The Real Product
Here’s what she made clear: PowerUP is not a martial arts organization. We are a self-regulation organization that uses martial arts as our delivery mechanism — and that distinction matters enormously.
“Self-regulation isn’t a soft skill. It’s a predictor of nearly every outcome we care about.”
Children who develop strong self-regulation — the ability to manage their emotions, control their impulses, and respond thoughtfully rather than react — go on to experience better physical health, greater financial stability, and higher life satisfaction. And the communities they grow up in become safer and stronger as a direct result.
The research doesn’t just support this — it’s overwhelming. Self-regulation is among the strongest predictors of long-term wellbeing we have. And the critical window for building it is childhood.
Why Martial Arts Works
This is where PowerUP’s model comes into sharp focus. Martial arts — when taught by the right mentors, consistently, during the years that matter — is one of the most rigorously validated interventions we have for building self-regulation in children. The structure, the repetition, the self-discipline required to earn a belt: every element of a good martial arts program is, at its core, a self-regulation exercise.
At PowerUP, we go further. Before any student throws a single punch, their sensei leads them through our three core values: Self-Regulation, Resilience, and Respect. These aren’t posters on a wall. They are the explicit curriculum — taught every session, reinforced every class, measured in every survey we run.
What Monday Night Meant
We started PowerUP in 2017 with a simple observation: martial arts senseis are professional mentors. They show up week after week for the same kids. They teach discipline and respect before they teach technique. They build relationships that last years.
What Dr. Lakes gave us Monday night was the vocabulary to say what we’ve always known to be true: the thing we’re building in these kids isn’t a karate skill. It’s a life skill — one that will affect their health, their finances, their relationships, and their communities for decades to come.
A room full of Atlanta’s most accomplished people sat quietly and listened. That felt meaningful.
If you’d like to learn more about PowerUP — or if you’re ready to put a child on that path — we’d love to hear from you. Join us in continuing this work.
Connor Cook is the Executive Director of PowerUP Scholarship Fund.