Martial arts have been practiced since about 5000 years ago and initially, people learned and practiced martial arts just to attain some self-defense skills but for a few decades, people have started martial arts practice for improving their physical, mental, and emotional health. In addition to toning your muscles, burning some extra calories, battling against some life-threatening ailments like diabetes, heart attack, hypertension, some types of cancers, and giving you relief against some chronic pains, martial arts is a great workout to enhance your physical and mental skills like focus, confidence, discipline, patience, goal-setting, humility, physical defense, passion, and optimism. However, many people still consider martial arts nothing more than fighting support and give up on the idea of martial arts because either they think their age is not suitable for this support or their physical abilities like flexibility and reflexiveness are not good enough to train in this rigorous workout. But if you somehow bring yourself to a martial arts class, you will see a great improvement in your physical abilities and mental capabilities. Read on to learn what skills martial art teaches and how important are those skills for your overall life.
Enhances physical defense:
The physical defense actually means defending yourself against a threat of violence with the help of armed or unarmed physical force. Although martial artists vow to use force as the last resort but self-defense against unannounced and sudden attacks is acceptable. The success of this defense depends upon the severity of the threat and the mental and physical preparedness of the defender. Martial arts training prepares students to become mentally tough and composed to execute any type of defense technique at the time of need.
Improves focus:
When you practice martial arts, you throw high kicks and strong punches while dodging the attacks of your opponent which ameliorates your focus. To master these moves, you execute them with full concentration even when sparring which works your focus. This focus is very important to stay safe against a physical threat and do other things more efficiently.
Teaches discipline:
Discipline is one of the chief characteristics of a martial artist. You can only learn this great sport if you are a very disciplined person and even coaches and instructors teach their students the value of discipline the minute they start their first class. Although every support has the ability to make you a disciplined person, martial art is best of them all in this regard.
Boosts your confidence:
Training in martial arts improves you physically and mentally, from day one you will start noticing some improvements in your personality. This feeling of achievement towards your fitness goals gives you great confidence. Moreover, the self-defense skills you learn from martial arts make you capable of defending yourself and your loved ones which boosts your confidence.
Instills the element of respect:
One of the most valuable skills that you learn from martial arts training is ‘respect’. Students learn to respect their sport (martial art), their instructors, each other, and themselves. Coaches teach their students why the element of respect is important to become a good martial artist and a good human being. Respect is overlooked in most facets of life these days which makes it even more important for the martial arts instructors to guide their class about respect.
Inculcates passion:
There is a famous adage, passion can beat talent. So, passion is very important in achieving your life goals. People who train in martial arts are very passionate and make every effort to learn martial arts moves and enhance physical abilities. When you see pictures and learn about stories of some great martial artists, you yourself in the desire of achieving all that become a very passionate and hardworking individual who stops at nothing less than what you actually want.
Helps you in goal setting:
Like many other fighting sports, karate has a belt ranking system where the white belt is the beginning of this long journey and the black belt is the destination. This ranking system makes people work hard and achieve the next rank; students set goals like how long they will take in moving to the next level of martial arts. This goal setting encourages them to achieve what they actually desire in life.
The upshot:
Martial arts have always been very popular especially in China, Korea, and Japan. This is why the origins of most arts are these countries. Initially, people started learning martial arts to attain some fighting skills but since the late 1950s people have learned about the health benefits of martial arts. Besides these health benefits, martial arts can provide you with some great skills and abilities like discipline, self-defense, respect, passion, etc. If you all these reasons are good enough to bring you to a martial arts school get yourself BJJ rash guards and BJJ shorts before signing up for some martial arts passion.
