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Fighting Fit – Martial Arts and Weight loss
Posted on November 6th, 2010 by admin, under best martial art.
If your goal is to improve your fitness or lose weight but you need to do something more exciting than jogging on a treadmill to keep you motivated, perhaps you should consider doing a martial art like boxing, kickboxing, karate, or judo.
In this article we list the top 10 reasons to consider doing a martial art for fitness and weight loss to help you decide if doing one is right for you.
1. Doing martial arts for weight loss
It’s no coincidence that gyms, personal trainers and producers of exercise videos and DVD’s are now heavily incorporating training techniques and exercises from a wide variety of martial arts in their workouts.
Boxercise, Tae Bo, Cardio-Kickboxing, Kung Fu Aerobics, and personal trainers using punching bags, focus mitts and kicking pads in their sessions are just a couple of examples of how martial arts training is being used in cardio workouts for fitness and weight loss.
Because martial art training is typically high intensity and usually lasts for at least an hour in most cases, it burns a maximum number of kilojoules or calories per workout and is therefore great for anyone who wants to lose weight and lose it fast.
2. Doing martial arts for fitness
Most martial arts incorporate exercises and drills that improve cardiovascular fitness and endurance, help build muscle strength and improve muscle flexibility so they are perfect for anyone wanting to improve their overall fitness.
Cardiovascular fitness improvements require us to regularly elevate our heart rate for extended periods and most martial arts training can help us do that.
Improving the strength, size and shape of our muscles requires us to regularly subject them to some form of resistance training. Martial arts training helps provide this training by requiring us to perform exercises like push-ups and squats using our own body weight for resistance.
Improved flexibility is a natural byproduct of martial arts training because most, if not all styles of martial art incorporate stretching exercises in their workouts.
As a result of providing all of these fitness benefits, martial artists like boxers and kickboxers are widely regarded as being among the fittest athletes in the world and practitioners of karate, judo, etc are considered among the strongest pound-for-pound and most flexible athletes in the world.
3. Doing martial arts and self-defense
One of the most obvious benefits of doing a martial art is that it provides us with the fitness, strength, skill and techniques necessary to protect ourselves from being attacked by others who are out to harm us if the need should ever arise.
Like an insurance policy, we hope you’re never in a position to have to use your martial arts training to defend yourself, but it’s great to know this ability is there just in case.
Because they are primarily concerned with elevating our heart rates to burn energy and improve our fitness, many of the workouts listed above like Tae Bo, Boxercise, etc don’t really provide this benefit to the same extent as doing martial arts training with a dedicated teacher in a martial arts school that only provides one service – to teach you a specific martial art.
Many people mistakenly believe that because they punch a focus mitt 50 times during a session with their personal trainer that they know how to punch properly and can therefore defend themselves if they need to. This is a big mistake and we hope these people never find themselves in a situation where this belief is tested.
Unless they’ve had many years of martial arts training themselves, most personal trainers and gym instructors will not be able to offer advice about your punching and kicking technique, they are only really qualified to hold the focus mitts or kick-pad for you while you punch or kick them.
Remember, while probably great at what they do, these trainers are more like aerobics instructors than specifically qualified martial arts instructors.
4. Doing martial arts and self-confidence
In addition to providing us with the ability to defend ourselves, one of the greatest personal benefits that martial art training provides is a high degree of self-confidence.
This self-confidence partly results from the knowledge that we are much better equipped to defend ourselves given that we have done some martial arts training, but it also comes from a sense of achievement once we begin to master the techniques taught to us and the new confidence that results from feeling fitter and stronger and looking fitter and stronger.
Given that one of the first things to suffer, and one of the hardest things to reestablish afterwards, when we become overweight is our self-confidence this benefit is of particular value to those of us who have a weight problem.
5. Doing martial arts to improve body balance and coordination
As well as helping us to become fitter and stronger, martial art training typically involves the mastery of a range of techniques that requires us to be well-balanced and have superior body coordination.
In learning to master these techniques we naturally improve our balance and our coordination which helps us with other aspects of our daily life.
6. Doing martial arts for variety
Martial art training provides great variety in two ways.
Firstly, martial arts training sessions themselves have great variety built into them by including warm-ups and cool-downs, stretching exercises, strength building exercises, cardio exercises and exercises designed to improve and teach us a wide variety of techniques.
This variety is great for our mind as well as our body.
Secondly, there are such a wide variety of martial arts to study that we should be able to easily find one that suits our particular goals and interests.
Whether we prefer to do a martial art that primarily revolves around striking or grappling techniques or a perfect mix of both, or we want to study a highly technical or very simple style, the choice is great.
7. Doing martial arts teaches discipline and provides motivation
Everybody knows that studying a martial art requires and teaches discipline.
Because it is also goal orientated, training in one of the many martial arts also provides a great deal of motivation.
Lack of discipline and motivation are the most often quoted reasons for weight loss failures and for this reason, doing a martial art for weight loss and fitness may help many of us who lack the required discipline and motivation to achieve our weight loss goals to overcome these common barriers to success.
8. Doing martial arts for spirituality
One definition of spirituality is “Activities which renew, lift up, comfort, heal and inspire both ourselves and those with whom we interact.”
Martial art training has been practiced by millions of people over many centuries because among other things, it has a great ability to spiritually uplift us.
As well as forging a better connection between our mind and body, it also has the ability to forge a better connection between us and our world and us and others.
9. Doing martial arts training is relatively inexpensive
Compared to joining some gyms and hiring some personal trainers, training at a martial arts school or dojo is relatively inexpensive.
Many martial arts schools charge a very modest monthly fee for training and the beauty of this is you can train when and as often as it suits you.
In addition to low ongoing training costs, buying a uniform and any equipment you may need to train in most cases will be relatively inexpensive as well.
10. Doing martial arts has a social aspect
Many people who start doing martial arts training for weight loss, improved fitness or self-defense end up enjoying it most for its social aspects.
As well as training and learning with others with similar goals, many martial arts trainees help encourage and motivate each other and end up becoming very good friends.
Many martial arts instructors too have very friendly dispositions and foster a fun and friendly environment in which to train which endears them to their students who typically also become close friends.
Conclusion
If your goal is to improve your fitness or lose weight but you need to do something more exciting than jogging on a treadmill to keep you motivated, perhaps you should consider doing a martial art like boxing, kickboxing, karate, or judo.
In this article we listed the top 10 reasons to consider doing a martial art for fitness and weight loss to help you decide if doing one is right for you.
Scott Haywood is the editor of Australia’s leading weight loss and healthy lifestyle website weightloss.com.au
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Martial Arts Fighting Styles – An Introduction
Posted on October 29th, 2010 by admin, under best martial art.
Martial arts fighting styles are many and varied with not only techniques but principles, cultures and philosophical approaches varying widely.
One of the difficulties in classifying fighting styles is that there is no definite consensus on what is the definition of a true martial arts fighting style.
For the purpose of this article I will use the definition of a martial arts fighting style as any system or methodology pertaining to fighting and combat situations, as this complies with the dictionary definition of the terms martial and art.
Some “authorities” would argue that they must originate from Asian cultures; an opinion that does not take into account the fighting systems of ancient Greece or Europe and their modern derivations.
From a general perspective martial arts styles can be separated into those that emphasize the use of weapons, those that concentrate on striking and those that emphasize grappling techniques.
This is only a very general classification as many systems combine two or more of these classifications and although many commentators would argue that a true martial art requires the use of all of these aspects of fighting that is not the case with many of the accepted martial arts disciplines.
Systems of martial arts fighting styles have evolved from the fighting techniques and methods used by warriors throughout the world and can be as diverse as full systems taught in schools of military training to
systems of fighting developed and kept within families.
It is only in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that we see the systematically taught instruction of styles that we see today, evolved.
Many of these systems have lost their practical fighting ability to the so called meditative aspects of the particular art or have been completely turned into just sports.
Some martial arts fighting styles have only appeared within the last 100 years and have never been exposed to the rigorous selection of real fighting that their predecessors underwent.
In the weaponry rich systems we find the Japanese systems of Kendo, Kenjutsu, Iaido, Jodo together with the Karate weaponry systems derived from the Kobudo weapons systems. Striking and grappling is either absent or very poorly developed in all of these systems.
The Chinese arts also utilize many weapons as part of their Kung Fu systems but these are taught as part of unarmed combat systems as well.
Probably the richest weapons systems are those of the Philipines and nearby areas of Malaysia and Indonesia; the blade and stick-fighting systems of Kali, Escrima and Arnis. These fighting systems also have a very complex and powerful unarmed combat components, together with the weapons and some also utilize throwing and ground fighting, these systems were very much family trained systems.
The Europeans also have the quarter-staff, sword and dagger systems which were extremely well developed and if you want to accept the definition that martial arts fighting styles are systems and methods of war and fighting then you would also have to include the disciplines of modern firearm and bayonet usage in this classification.
The striking systems are probably the most well known and most practiced through out the world with the Karate system of Japan being the most well known. There are many different styles of Karate each having slightly different emphasis on different methodologies and while most include some form of weaponry at higher levels it is certainly not well developed and doesn’t have a practical realistic usage, apart from exercise and strengthening value which is normally the justification for using them as part of their systems. Much of it is drawn from the Kobudo group of weapons and has lost a lot of it’s functionality in ritual.
The most powerful striking martial art would be Muay Thai and its’ close cousin Burmese boxing; these striking systems are extremely well developed and deliver strikes with incredible speed, power and ferocity.
Brazilian Capoiera is a very acrobatic striking style that has lost much of its practical fighting ability that existed in the original African system from which it was derived. A similar situation is demonstrated by the Chinese martial art of Wushu which has become very flashy and demonstrates little practical fighting ability.
Do we include western boxing in martial arts? I think that we should because it fulfills much the same requirements of Judo as a martial art. It has suffered the change of time in placing rules on it but in the past it was certainly more brutal then it is now.
It carries its’ own philosophy and that introduces me to the argument that a martial art should have an underlying philosophy a point that I definitely agree with, however, who is anyone to say that the philosophies by which we westerners do things are not as valid as the philosophies of the eastern cultures.
Modern wrestling is in the same genre being derived from the ancient Pankration and now controlled by rules but again it was originally used for fighting and had and still has a distinct philosophy behind it.
Now we come to the self defence systems of Close Quarter Combat and Krav Maga again these would fit the classification of a martial art as set down by the other determinants. This is even though Krav Maga does not claim to be one, but one only has to read the original intent of its’ founder to determine that it is a martial art.
The striking arts of the malaysian, philipino and indonesian area are also vey well developed with the silats demonstrating a very complex and rich understanding of fighting principles and concepts.
The fighting styles that emphasize grappling include Judo, Jiu jitsu, Aikido and sumo from Japan together with Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Chin Na from China. Here we find the strongest support for the argument that some of the systems I have classified as martial arts above should be included.
If you are to remove boxing and wrestling from the classification of martial arts then you have to remove Sumo and Judo as well.
Russian Sambo, American Catch, Free-style and Greco-Roman wrestling are fighting systems that exist on that fringe of the classification are usually classified as a sport.
The richest of the martial arts fighting styles are the muti-discipline martial arts such as Ninjutsu and the Chinese Kungfus although the latter has many different styles with most only emphasizing one or two aspects of fighting.
The most dominant fighting system at the present time is Mixed Martial Arts. This together with its’ inspiration from Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Vale Tudo is the biggest thing that has happened to martial arts since Bruce Lee.
There are those that would argue it is not a martial art – in my opinion this is completely absurd it has all of the requirements apart from the use of weapons, but neither do many of the other accepted fighting disciplines.
The philosophy is a western style of philosophy of mental toughness and training discipline and, I say again, what is so different about that and eastern philosophies. Particularly as we see eastern philosophic driven societies demonstrating anti-humanistic and anti-environment practices throughout the modern world many of which are driven by the philosophies of Sun Tzu and the Go Rin No Sho as underlying guides.
This article is by no means a complete account of all fighting systems as almost every country around the world has a fighting system as part of its’ culture each having evolved as time has gone by and lifestyles have changed that in turn has led to us utilizing the values of martial arts for different reasons.
Geoff owns and operates a full time professional Martial Arts Academy in Christchurch, New Zealand that teaches people of all ages, Muay Thai, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Mixed Martial Arts and a weaponry program that includes Philipino stick and knife fighting, kenjutsu and Jojitsu. Check out the Academy of Combat here at http://www.AcademyofCombat.co.nz.
In addition I often discuss fighting systems together with self defense tactics in my blog at http://www.UltimateFightingSystems.com that will help you develop your knowledge and experience.
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Fighting Secrets of Martial Arts Package
Posted on October 20th, 2010 by admin, under Martial Arts Training Equipment.
This is ultimate guide to street self defense written by 15 of the world’s top martial artists and close combat specialists. This package contains a 183-page information-packed eBook, plus bonus audios & video downloads – the perfect affiliate product!
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Val vs Em New TUFF Girls Female Grappling Apr 09 MMA Gloves
Posted on August 15th, 2009 by admin, under martial arts gloves.
TWO new TUFF fighters, Val (dark top) and Em (white top), FIRST day, FIRST sparring! Val has some fighting training, and has played all sports, while Em has played soccer (lots of red cards) and runs Xcountry. They quickly get better as the day goes on. Val is smaller and quick, while Em is tall and looks innocent…NOT. They both are great additions to TUFF! They put on the MMA gloves to get a taste of being able to hit while on the mat per our striking rules. While they don’t hit much, as they are focused on grappling, its a great introduction to hitting, and how it changes the fight. They both loved everything they did at TUFF on their first day, and are great new additions to TUFF! Look for them BOTH in our May 2 Live Event.
Duration : 0:4:14
