Before you get involved in a martial art, it’s a good idea to learn a bit more about it. What can you expect in the classes, and will the art be beneficial to your life or rather a drain? For years I have spoken of the benefits and advantages of Karate, and now I am glad that I get the opportunity to share them.
Yup, you read that right! When you practice Karate regularly, you get to enjoy at least 21 benefits and probably more. If you are looking for a way to add healthy advantages to your life, Karate might just be the answer! As a Karate practitioner, there are various ways in which you will benefit. These benefits won’t happen overnight and you will need to practice the art regularly to enjoy them too.
These are 21 benefits and advantages of doing Karate:
1. Boost body agility.
Karate moves and techniques are based on quick and seamless movements. The more you practice Karate, the more you will be able to move quickly in various directions. You will also be able to carry out complex steps (footwork) with ease. This means that your overall agility will greatly improve.
2. Boost your heart health.
Heart health is an area of concern around the globe. More people want a healthy heart and live longer, and that’s certainly possible with a healthy lifestyle. Being fit and active is great for your heart health. The more active you are, the better it is for your heart. Keep practicing your Karate and you are doing good things for the health of your heart.
3. Learn respect.
All martial arts are based on respect, and it is something that all training sessions are focused on. In order for the student to work well with the Sensei, he or she must have respect and follow instructions well. Even when the Sensei corrects or criticizes the practitioner’s moves, he/she must respond with acceptance and respect. Many practitioners are able to apply this level of respect to other areas of their lives too.
4. Relief stress and frustration.
After a long day at work or school and with tension and stress levels high, you may feel like screaming into the abyss or punching a wall. You probably won’t do either of these things, which means that frustrations merely rise. Karate, because it has a fairly fast-paced and methodical aspect, provides a great way to release inner frustration and stress.
5. Improve blood pressure.
Because Karate practice will involve repetitive movements that are rapid and high intensity, you will be able to lower your heart rate and blood pressure. The more you practice Karate, the fitter you get and the lower your blood pressure will be.
6. Enjoy better sleep.
Don’t sleep very well? Perhaps you need to add a bit of Karate practice to your life. There’s no denying it, a healthy, active lifestyle leads to better sleep patterns. When you workout daily, and especially because Karate can be quite tiring, your sleeping patterns will become healthier.
7. Increase muscle strength and tone.
In order for your muscles to get stronger and more toned, you need to work them out often. Regular Karate practice could strengthen and tone many muscles in your body. Karate practice includes pushups and various positions, such as “front stance” and “horse stance”, which are designed to increase muscle strength.
8. Enhance balance skills.
Have you ever noticed that Karate practitioners seem balanced yet light on their feet? That’s because they have been working on their balance since the first day of their Karate lessons. While you may start out with Karate with no balance, it will certainly develop with practice through the various Karate kicks, kihon, and kata. These moves build balance and mobility, which are two things that every perfected Karate technique relies on.
9. Lose weight.
Struggling to lose weight? Perhaps Karate can take your weight loss efforts to the next level. Karate demands many hours of dedicated practice from its practitioners. The more active you are, the more your metabolism will be at work burning calories which leads to weight loss. Pairing Karate with a healthy diet can help you lose weight in a healthy way.
10. Get a full-body workout.
We all know that we need to do the type of exercise that gets our heart rates up, but we also want to do a bit of work with weights to strengthen muscles and build a nice physique. Karate provides the type of workout that offers cardiovascular workout as well as muscle building and toning. When it comes to getting an all-round workout; Karate is it.
11. Improve your posture.
If you want to improve your posture or ensure that your kids have a good posture, consider Karate as a fitness option. Karate improves static and dynamic balance. Karate practice is focused on core training, which strengthens the abdominals and back muscles, thus improving posture at the same time.
12. Enhance reflexes.
When it comes to quicker and more reliable reflexes, Karate is a great “teacher”. Karate teaches practitioners to be spatially aware and alert to what is happening around them. This naturally leads to enhanced reflexes as practice continues and skills improve.
13. Improve overall coordination.
Muscular communication is essential for good coordination, and this is where Karate really shines. The more a student progresses in training, the more techniques will require more coordination, as well as better hand-eye coordination. A highly trained Karate expert is, therefore, very coordinated.
14. Boost your mood.
If you have a low mood situation, a bit of physical exercise can turn it around. When you exercise, hormones and chemicals are released into the brain. These chemicals leave you feeling good and happy. The release of these chemicals leads to reduced anxiety and depression.
15. Enhance confidence and self-esteem levels.
When a student learns Karate, he or she is forced to learn to respect and trust him or herself. As skills progress and a student feels like he or she can take care of him or herself, confidence and self-esteem improve too.
16. Increase energy levels.
Karate practitioners all over the world benefit greatly from the increased levels of energy they experience when practicing Karate regularly. Karate training practices increase a person’s lung capacity and cardiovascular capacity. This, in turn, releases more oxygen to the bloodstream and brain, which leads to more energy and alertness.
17. Learn effective self-defense.
There’s no denying it, the more you learn about Karate and practice it, the better you will be at defending yourself in confrontational or dangerous situations.
18. Boost stamina and overall performance.
Karate, as already mentioned, provides a full-body workout that requires stamina from practitioners. If you start learning Karate and can’t keep up with the practices because you lack stamina, that will change. As you keep practicing the Karate techniques, your stamina will improve. With improved stamina comes improved overall performance.
19. Learn patience.
In order to be good at Karate, you need to perfect each technique. This takes a lot of patience as students want to progress but cannot rush or force it. In the beginning, this can be frustrating, and a student has to learn patience to let the learning process takes its course.
20. Discover the meaning and benefits of humility.
Humility is something that can benefit a person in every stage of their life. Karate is a great way to teach this to a person. While practicing and learning Karate, you will encounter many scenarios during sparring and even basic drills, where you learn that there are Karate practitioners out there that are more experienced and better at the art than you.
21. Practice mindfulness.
Everyone is looking for ways to live more mindfully, and Karate provides the perfect opportunity to do just that. Throughout every practice, a student is required to be fully present and thinking about precisely what they are doing at that exact time. There is little time to be distracted or lost in thought. As such, Karate is a mindful martial art.
Last Word
If you have been wondering if Karate is beneficial or advantageous to its practitioners, it certainly is. The 21 points above are proof of that. If you are looking for a martial art that adds value and quality to your life, Karate is it!