Taking up a Martial Art: What Are the Health Benefits?

You may think that you’ve tried everything you can to lose weight – increased your fitness, followed a low fat diet and so on, and whilst these things may have benefitted your wellness and wellbeing, they haven’t actually helped you to shed the pounds.

 

Have you considered taking up a martial art, though? You’ve probably seen someone participate in martial arts and not really thought about the exercise benefits that this type of activity offers. Not only can something like this help you shed weight, it can also improve your mood, help you lose weight and benefit your overall health.

 

First of all, one of the best benefits associated with martial arts is the boost that it can give to your cardiovascular health. This means, in layman’s terms, that doing a martial art makes your heart healthier. Your cardiovascular system consists of your heart, veins and arteries, and if your cardiovascular system is weak, you can find yourself suffering from shortness of breath, fatigue, weakness and, in severe cases, a heart attack. Research has shown that a martial art is one of the best ways to help improve the health of your cardiovascular system, and should be carried out for around 30 minutes several days a week.

 

The benefit that you may be most interested in, however, is the weight loss associated with taking part in a martial art. Doing around an hour of moderate intensity martial art can make you burn around 500 calories. A deficit of 500 calories a day leads to you losing a pound a week (at least) and so if you participate in a martial art, you are streets ahead of the game even before you start considering a healthy diet. When combined with a healthy diet, you can be leaner, slimmer and stronger all in one go, within a relatively short space of time.

Categories: arts, cardiovascular, diet, health, healthy diet, Lose weight, martial, martial art, martial arts, weight

How Practising Martial Arts Can Help You Lose Weight

If you’re looking for a fun and interesting new way to lose weight and improve your fitness, as well as your general wellness and wellbeing, you might want to consider taking up a martial art. Martial arts are combative classes, where the objective is to defend yourself from any physical threats that surround you, or to defeat other people in the immediate vicinity. In some forms of martial arts there is an attached belief system, such as Daoism, Buddhism or Hinduism.

 

With all the emphasis on physicality and discipline, it’s no surprise that taking up a martial art can help you to maintain your weight or even lose weight. Martial arts lessons can help you to increase your fitness and tone up all over. Usually, during a martial arts class, you spend an hour or more engaged in intense physical movements. All of this intensity means that you burn lots of calories, which directly translates into fat loss. Doing this type of intense activity also boosts your metabolism, which means that you are burning calories even after the class is complete.

 

Martial arts lessons can also be a great motivator, as the discipline involved with practising the art gives you a reason to keep working out time and time again. During most martial arts, you set goals and then use your own personal commitment to help achieve these goals. This positive mental attitude is great as it means you are really focusing on the goals involved in the art rather than any specific weight loss goals – the weight loss almost happens incidentally.

 

There are actually two categories of martial arts as well – hard martial arts and soft martial arts. If you’re just starting out, the best way is to look at something like ITF Taekwon Do because this is a hard martial art, and you are more likely to lose weight with something like this than with a ‘soft’ martial art.

Categories: ART, arts, arts lessons, hard martial, Lose weight, martial, martial art, martial arts, soft martial, weight, Weight Loss

Different Types Of Yoga: Choose the Best One for You

Yoga has become something of a phenomenon in the west. For something that only a few years ago we had no idea of what it was or what it could do for us, it has become very popular to the point where virtually everyone has heard of it. We’ve all seen advertisements for yoga classes or maybe we’ve have even seen one taking place (or been to one), it truly is something that has become a part of mainstream society. But it isn’t always clear why this is the case. What has yoga got that has made it stand out as something that people should do?

 

Yoga is unique because it offers so much to so many different people. It can be a form of exercise – the stretches and positions are great way to stay in shape if you are looking for a calmer form of working out. But it’s not just for when you want to be able to slim down or get in a little bit better shape. Yoga is a great way to improve your flexibility, which can be very important for other sports as well as in many aspects of life. For others, yoga is not so much a physical exercise as it is a way to focus themselves or achieve a meditative state. With so many different functions it is no surprise that yoga has become such a huge hit.

 

But given its popularity it may also be true that we do not really know very much about it. Of course you have heard of yoga, everyone has, but do you know anything about the positions, or the theories, or indeed the many different types of yoga? Many people think that yoga is just one single practice and that there is only one way to do it. But really it is more helpful to think of yoga in terms as if it is a martial art – there are many different types; just think about the difference between karate and judo, and the difference between judo and capoeira. Just like there are many different types of martial art, there are many different types of yoga – and they all offer something a little bit different.

 

So which type of yoga is right for you? That can be a difficult question to answer so we’ve prepared a list of the most popular forms to help you identify that different forms and make the decision for the type of yoga that you would like to do.

 

Ashtanga or Power yoga: This is a demanding workout that asks you to constantly move from one posture over to another.

 

Anusara: This is spiritually inspiring yoga that focuses on promoting a deep knowledge of outer and inner body alignment.

 

Bikram or Hot yoga: This idea promotes a workout of 26 asanas practiced in a room that is 95 to 100 degrees in order to warm and stretch the muscles, ligaments, and tendons; it is physically challenging and detoxifying.

 

Embodyoga: This practice promotes the idea of listening to your body-mind connection.

 

Integral: This constitutes a more gentle form of yoga that often includes breathing exercises, chanting and meditation.

 

Iyengar: This practice emphasises great attention to detail, in the form of body alignment and holding poses for lengthy periods.

 

Jivamukti: This is a more physically challenging selection of asanas with classes that include chanting, meditation, readings, music and affirmations.

 

Kundalini: This form of yoga emphasises the effects of breath on the postures, with the aim of freeing energy in the lower body to move upwards.

Categories: asanas, body, body alignment, form, martial art, nbsp, physically challenging, types, yoga

Good Health, Grasshopper: The Benefits of Martial Arts

Exercise is difficult – especially when it’s boring. You might want to fight those pounds in the gym or run them off, but there’s no way you’re going to manage it if you’re not interested in what you’re doing. The best thing for your wellbeing is to distract yourself from the fact that you’re exercising at all, and the way to do that is by changing your focus to a martial art like boxing, kickboxing, karate, or judo. That way, you’re concentrating on learning the moves rather than on what it’s doing for your fitness. Plus, there are multiple wellness benefits in martial arts.

 

1. Weight loss: Typically, martial art training is typically high intensity and lasts for at least an hour. This means that you’re getting a monumental cardio workout and burning a lot of calories in the process. This makes martial arts an excellent option if you want to lose weight quickly.

 

2. Fitness: The exercises and drills involved in martial arts improve your cardiovascular fitness and endurance by helping to improve your muscle strength and flexibility. This is because you do a lot of resistance training (push-ups and squats) and stretching exercises.

 

3. Self-defence: This is probably the most well-known outcome with martial arts, as you are learning a fighting technique. While martial arts-esque fitness programmes like Tae Bo and Boxercise are beneficial in multiple ways to your wellness, if you want to guard your wellbeing against an attack you need to train with a dedicated teacher in a martial arts school that teaches you a specific martial art.

 

4. Self-confidence: Not only are you now able to defend yourself, but you have a sense of achievement from mastering the techniques. This, plus the fact you’re fitter and stronger, can do wonders for your confidence.

 

5. Balance and coordination: Martial art training typically involves mastering a range of techniques, which will require you to be well-balanced and have superior body coordination. Therefore, learning these techniques will improve those areas, which can help with your daily life.

 

6. Variety: Within a martial arts session, there’s a great variety for your body and mind in terms of warm-ups and cool-downs, stretching exercises, strength building exercises, cardio exercises and exercises designed to teach you different techniques. Plus, as there are so many martial arts to get involved in, it’s easy to find one to keep you interested and help you achieve your goals.

 

7. Discipline and motivation: Martial arts are goal orientated, which helps to focus and motivate you to continue. Lack of discipline and motivation are common pitfalls to weight loss and even career progression, but learning these traits can directly and indirectly help you in these aspirations.

 

8. Spirituality: Someone once defined spirituality as “Activities which renew, lift up, comfort, heal and inspire both ourselves and those with whom we interact.” This remains a key reason why so many people practise martial arts, as it forges a connection between your body, mind, others and the world around you.

 

9. Cost-effectiveness: Most people join a gym and never go, or hire a personal trainer and give up after two sessions of intense shouting. By comparison, training with a martial arts school or dojo is relatively inexpensive, as they often offer a low monthly all-you-can-exercise price.

 

10. Socialising: Unlike running or going to the gym, martial arts provide the opportunity to train and learn with others, which means you can encourage and motivate each other. Many people doing martial arts end up becoming very good friends, and many instructors are lovely and foster a fun and friendly atmosphere. After all, if you don’t enjoy it, what’s the point?

Categories: art training, arts, arts school, martial, martial art, martial arts, nbsp, Self Defence, stretching exercises, Weight Loss