How to Use Food to Help Speed Up Your Reaction Speed

When children are little, they are always told to eat up their healthy food so that they grow up to be big and strong like Popeye. Whilst this is just a traditional childhood saying, to help children make the right choices for their wellness, there is no doubt that adequate diet and nutrition has a huge impact on your health and wellbeing.

 

As children get older and start getting into sports and martial arts, they may be more receptive to the idea that certain foods will help them to improve in their chosen field. Anyone who wants to improve their reflexes (which are used in many different sports such as tennis, kickboxing and martial arts, as well as video games of various types) should eat more spinach and more eggs.

 

To this end, a spinach omelette might be exactly what you need to help you succeed in your chosen sport. Of course, you still have to put in all the time training and perfecting your art and skills, but those who have faster reflexes are more likely to succeed. Some people naturally have fast reflexes, but this is a skill that can be improved with practice. An amino acid called tyrosine can help you to improve your reflexes, and this is what is found in spinach and in eggs.

 

Tyrosine has been well-known for a long time as a brain booster, and recent research has shown that tyrosine can increase the human body’s ability to stop something for occurring by reacting quickly. Having tyrosine can help to increase your mental quickness and your academic performance, as well as your physical performance.

 

Other foods are known to contain tyrosine, such as soy protein, seaweed, fish, turkey, salmon and even some game meats.

Categories: Children, eggs nbsp, foods, martial arts, nbsp, reaction, reflexes, spinach, tyrosine

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

Abs Like Alba: How to Get the Celebrity Body You Want

You only have to look at your average celebrity to realise they’ve mastered the art of fitness. While some stars turn to expensive cosmetic treatments to look like they’ve got their wellness in shape, most actually favour good old-fashioned exercise to take care of their wellbeing – and it shows. The question is; how do they do it – and how can you do it too? We’ve got the skinny from the trainers that helped to shape the gorgeous bodies you see on screens today, so how do you sculpt an a-list figure?

 

1. Jessica Biel’s arms: Valentine’s Day star Jessica Biel has arms that even Michelle Obama would kill for, and it’s all thanks to the push-up power favoured by her LA trainer Jason Walsh. Walsh admits, ‘When I say this is a must-do exercise, most women look at me like I’m crazy, but everybody I train ends up doing push-ups at some point because they are so beneficial. They help you get incredible arms!’

 

2. Halle Berry’s back: Anyone who’s ever seen Catwoman knows how amazing Halle Berry’s back is – that costume didn’t leave much to the imagination – and her secret weapon for getting superhero-ready was Harley Pasternak, an LA–based trainer and author of 5-Factor Diet. According to Pasternak, dumbbell back rows are the key to Berry’s back: ‘This exercise strengthens the rhomboids, the muscles in your upper back that connect your shoulder blades to your spine, giving you a toned back and much better posture. You’ll look great in backless dresses, too!’ Do three sets of 20 reps to have a back like Berry.

 

3. Jennifer Anniston’s bum: While J-Lo might make headlines for her delicious derrière, another Jennifer who has a backside that would suit anyone is Friends star Jennifer Anniston. Her trainer Cameron Shayne, creator of the popular Budokon yoga–martial arts programme, asserts that the dancing half-moon kick is the top-bottom move for sculpting buns to be proud of. ‘This exercise combines yoga to stretch the lower back and open the hips with martial arts to tighten and shape the butt,’ Shayne explains. ‘The result is a strong, lean backside.’ Shayne advises you do your dancing half-moon kick in 12 rep-per-leg stints.

 

4. Gwyneth Paltrow’s legs: Sure, she has her own healthy cookbook, but the true reason behind Gwyneth’s amazing legs is Tracy Anderson, fitness expert and creator of the Tracy Anderson Method. Anderson details how she used the crossover leg lift to help shape the Ironman star’s pin-up pins: ‘This exercise works your entire leg, particularly the hard-to-tone outer-thigh area that’s a problem for a lot of women.’ However, to get proper Paltrow pins, you need to aim to do 25 reps per side to begin with, eventually working up to 50 reps in a set.

 

5. Jessica Alba’s abs: In order to play a member of the Fantastic Four or a dancer as she did in Honey, Jessica Alba needed kick-ass abs and Ramona Braganza, trainer and creator of the 3-2-1 Baby Bulge Be Gone programme, helped her achieve them with the twisting plank. Braganza comments, ‘This is an excellent exercise for both the obliques (your side ab muscles) and the transverse abdominus, the muscle that acts like a girdle and cinches in your waist.’ However, one top move isn’t enough if you want abs like Alba’s; you also need to start doing some squat thrusts. ‘The Squat Thrust is a very effective move for your upper and lower abs—plus it burns loads of calories,’ says Braganza, who recommends that you do 10 reps of squat thrusts at a time.

Categories: Abs, arms, Celebrity Wellness, exercise, halle berry, jennifer anniston, jessica alba, jessica biel, martial arts, moon kick, squat thrusts, tracy anderson

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

How Can You Improve Your Fitness with Martial Arts?

Martial arts are becoming more and more popular among women for a variety of reasons. You might like to take up martial arts because you’re concerned for your wellbeing, and want a good mode of self-defence. You might like it because it’s a great hobby or something to do with friends, or you might think it’s a great fitness regime. Perhaps the last reason doesn’t exactly spring to mind when you compare martial arts to, say, running or going to the gym, but learning a martial art is a great overall workout for your body.

 

Firstly, as martial arts require a lot of movement, they’re great for building your cardiovascular wellness and stamina. Boxing and kickboxing, for example, often involve fast-paced and intense bursts of speed, and so are well apt to improve your overall cardio ability. This is because you are getting your blood pumping through your heart and veins on a regular basis, and so this will make you healthier and strengthen your heart.

 

One of the more obvious benefits of taking up a high-movement activity like a martial art is that all that aerobic activity will help you to lose weight. If you participate in an hour of repeated martial arts exercises and training, then you could potentially lose an average of 500 calories. And if you do that two or three times a week, you could shift roughly half a pound of fat. Martial arts will also help you to use muscles you probably never thought you would use, but through repeated regimes, you can tone up and strengthen your muscular frame, which gets you in great shape and helps to boost your resting metabolism.

 

Also, because martial arts often require the same routine to be performed again and again, this improves your muscle memory. This is important for enhancing your reflexes, coordination and speed, and can help you to react faster. Many people take up martial arts as a means of self-defence for this reason, but faster reactions can also carry over to the regular activities you perform in your daily life. From carrying the shopping to crossing the road, everything you do can be done more effectively.

 

Finally, don’t forget the mental benefits of taking up martial arts. Your body and your mind are linked, and so when you improve your physical performance, your cognitive ability and mood will improve too. Exercising in this way can help to relieve stress and anxiety, and generally boost your overall mood and sense of wellbeing too. If you’re interested in martial arts, or want more information, visit www.fightshop.com to find out more.

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How Can You Improve Your Fitness with Martial Arts?

Categories: Cardio, fitness, martial arts