Starting a martial art for many is a great way to increase their confidence, and to give them the knowledge that they can defend themselves should they be attacked in the street (or anywhere else for that matter). If you’re already quite confident in your combat abilities however, or just have noticed that you don’t actually get attacked that often, then you might be forgiven for thinking that there’s no reason for you to take it up.

This would be a mistake however, as the fact of the matter is that martial arts have many benefits outside of just self defence (though that can be handy too when you need to whup your mates ass for making fun of your ears). In particular martial arts have a wide variety of different health benefits – though these will vary depending on the style of martial art you choose to do.

Firstly, most martial arts are far more active than you might realise. Normally there’s a good ten minute warm-up at least that will involve a variety of stretches and CV activities. If you pick a hard style such as karate or tai kwon do (one with a lot of kicking and punching) then this will often be fairly intense and involve running up and down the dojo. In capoeira it involves cartwheels and handstand press ups and lasts anywhere up to thirty minutes.

Then you have to actually do the martial art. Again, if it’s a hard style that’ll involve repeating punches and kicks and running through set patterns of movements called ‘kata’. A kata requires you to not only go through the movements though, but to do so with style tensing on each imagined impact which is one hell of a workout and great for muscle definition.

If you practice sparring, this will involve doing all that while bouncing up and down, dodging and weaving in and out, and blocking attacks. These fights can last ages and if you’re doing well in a round robin contest you might have to do five before you get to sit down. If you’re doing this two to three times a week this means you’re getting regular CV and working your muscles too. Overtime this can give you a shredded and ripped physique and few sportsmen have such toned bodies martial artists.

The slower styles of martial arts, called ‘internal styles’, such as Tai Chi and some forms of Kung Fu will train your fitness in other ways. Though the movements in Tai Chi might looks slow for example, you’re actually requiring more muscle control and balance to run through them and also paying more attention to technique and posture which will aid your health in many ways.

Both styles though will train your balance which is an integral part of martial arts, requiring you to stand on one leg to kick pads and opponents. At the same time the stretches at the beginning will improve your flexibility and help you with the high kicks. So if you want rock hard abs, great flexibility, impressive fitness and CV, improved strength and balance to boot (literally), maybe Martial Arts are still for you.

Mack LeMouse

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