Fit for Karate?
Our Basingstoke Martial Arts Academy often gets asked by new comers to the world of Martial Arts, “How fit do I need to be” sometimes this is suffixed with one of the statements “I’m too old, too fat, too unfit, too busy, too something”……………
None of us start off as being super fit athletes, we all have to work on it, usually over a period of months and years, sometimes even decades. The most important qualities of a Martial Artist are:-
- Ability to perservere and keep trying, even when its tough going and to overcome the natural peaks and troughs in any training cycle
- Self belief and self confidence
- A willingness to try and keep trying until you succeed – (we never “I can’t” instead we say “I can’t YET, but will practice until I can”)
- A sense of humour and a desire to have fun, lots of it.
The best way to get fit to do any sporting or physical activity, is by doing it. Sure if you want to learn a Martial Art, you can do lots of swimming, gym work, running or anything else and they should all help to improve your general fitness, but if you want to get ft and learn a Martial Arts, then you need to go and practice that Martial Art, its simple really.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, nor will your improved fitness levels be. We’ll start you off with a warm up firstly to make sure that your body is ready to start exercising. We take you through a number of conditioning drills and exercises to help develop your fitness levels, all before the main content of a class and then to finish a cooldown and some stretching. The drills and exercises have to be performed at your own level, actually to be accurate you should try to do slightly better than your own level, so that in every class, you improve your fitness and skill levels and thus increase yourown threshold and level. This kinds of approach sets you up well for long term development in your Martial Arts practice and the pursuit for excellence.
You don’t need to fit to start to learn a Martial Art, just ready to have fun and be prepared to try your best. No excuses, you aren’t too fat, too old, too busy, too something……… As Nike would say “Just do it!”
