Karate and many other martial arts promote many physical attributes. As a consequence, learning it will not only teach you to fight fiercely. Instead, it’ll provide many physical and mental benefits. So, let’s examine whether karate is a good exercise.
Karate is an effective exercise because it’s an intense workout-thus boosting your average heart rate while training. Moreover, it uses many muscle groups, and as a result, you’ll burn many calories in your training. For example, it’s not uncommon to see trainees burn up to 720 calories per hour.
Many medical publications have proved the effectiveness dedicated martial arts training has on its trainees. Some of these benefits will be mental ones, such as increased confidence and well-being.
Other publications have proved the correlation between the mental and physical sides in humans. As a result, if you can improve your mental health, your physical health will also better. Therefore, some benefits we’ll discuss are more mental than physical, but still correlate to fitness.
Martial arts, and particularly karate, will boost physical health amongst their trainees. In fact, some will wake up sore after the first workout, a sign of future physical growth.
Next, we’ll examine the 7-most prominent fitness benefits we can link to consistent and dedicated karate training. All of these will drastically improve your life and well-being, and as a result, learning it-is wise.
#1- Burning calories
The first benefit to consistent martial arts training is burning more calories. I decided to list it in the first position for a primary reason: more people will care about it than all the other benefits.
Today, we chase the feeling of being productive regarding our physical health. As a result, more people can testify how important it is for them to burn more calories.
So, what exactly does burning calories do?
The science of the matter goes as follows: if you burn more calories than you intake in a day, you’ll burn fat. On the other hand, if the opposite is true, you’ll find yourself gaining fat, an unwanted result for most people.
Karate allows you to burn up to 720 calories and more for a moderate type of exercise. Some training will include more intensive workouts, such as hitting a punching bag. In them, you’ll burn more calories. At times, it’s not uncommon for all martial arts trainees to burn up to 1100 calories per hour.
If you have some background in calories, which most people do, you know that 700 calories in an hour of training is easily the difference between gaining and losing fat. As a result, if you consistently involve yourself in karate training, you’ll shed body fat quickly and effectively.
#2- Lowered stress and aggression levels
A superb study proved that martial arts, including karate, lower stress and aggression levels.
Such a breakthrough! So, how does it work?
Karate is a platform for its trainees to release built aggression and tension by giving them the opportunity to go through many drills. Moreover, when you need to use the fighting techniques you learned in an actual fight, you’ll be capable of releasing your inner beast while staying calm.
“Martial arts apprentices turned out to present a statistically significantly lower level of hostility and of the general aggression index than combat sports athletes.”
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Long were the years when people wanted to find out how to reduce stress. To this day, it’s a common issue between many people worldwide.
Essentially, what this study found was that you can reduce your stress and aggression levels while learning to fight. Indeed, you’ll practice karate and learn the techniques while simultaneously reducing your stress.
Picture how better your physical health will be in the long term if you were constantly less stressed; your soul and body are connected. When you feel good, you’ll also act like it.
#3- Improved aerobic shape
Thirdly, your aerobic shape will improve when you dedicate yourself to karate training. Eventually, most moderate and intensive exercises will achieve the same. Because of that, it’ll be best if you stick to your training to improve your aerobic shape.
Aerobic exercise reduces the risk of many conditions. These conditions include obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, stroke and certain types of cancer. Weight-bearing aerobic exercises, such as walking, help lower the risk of osteoporosis.
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Karate is a suitable aerobic exercise to improve your overall physical health, since it includes many movement types and involves many muscle groups. As a result, your heart rate will be higher than if you were to rest for the entire training period. That’s how you improve your aerobic shape.
The most known way to grow your aerobic shape is through moderate exercises, such as long-running. However, most people don’t participate in them because they’re boring. There, I said it, they’re boring.
Well, karate is the opposite of boring-and you should learn it if you want to learn to fight while improving your physical health in the short and long term.
#4- Better endurance
Your endurance is a fantastic metric to whether your physical shape is at a solid level. Therefore, improving it-will require you to be active in your day-to-day.
Karate improves endurance by being an intense exercise. If you stay active with your training routine, you will find your endurance improves as your heart rate will be higher.
Endurance exercise training exerts many positive effects on health, including improved metabolism, reduction of cardiovascular risk, and reduced all-cause and cardiovascular mortality.
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As you can see, the benefits of high endurance-are fantastic and will greatly improve your well-being. I mean, anyone would want their metabolism to improve. I’m sure you would want to reduce your chances of cardiovascular risk.
To conclude, a higher level of endurance equals a higher level of physical health. Karate is a fantastic platform for you to achieve both because it will constantly push your physical and mental boundaries.
#5- Better mental health
The fifth fitness benefit of karate is better mental health. If you have extraordinary memory, you may recall I mentioned that some mental benefits link to physical health. For example, I mentioned confidence as being one of them.
Better mental health links to an improvement in physical health. Essentially, the soul and body are connected in some way. I’m not saying you can eat whatever you want if you feel good about yourself. However, you’re more likely to stay active and consistent if you feel fulfilled and with a purpose.
The associations between mental and physical health are: Poor mental health is a risk factor for chronic physical conditions. People with serious mental health conditions are at high risk of experiencing chronic physical conditions. People with chronic physical conditions are at risk of developing poor mental health.
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As such, we now know that mental health issues can cause physical conditions while affecting your physical health. In fact, the opposite also applies and enters the equation.
Karate is a suitable source to improve your mental health because of a few primary reasons:
- It betters social life
- Karate gives its trainees a purpose
- It makes its trainees overcome obstacles
- Karate pushes the physical and mental boundaries
- It teaches you to fight fiercely.
As you can see, many are the reasons for karate to improve your mental health. While some can relate to one or more reasons from this list, others will relate to effects I didn’t even mention. That’s how many positive attributes we can link to martial arts.
#6- Higher self-esteem
A recent study concluded that karate improves self-esteem. The study was so on point that it approves this claim and thus gives us more confidence in this martial art.
In today’s world, many distractions, the primary being social media, reduce the self-esteem of many young people and adults. As a result, many of us lack self-esteem since we never appreciate our current selves.
This is caused by many factors, such as always feeling as if we’re missing out. I can now confidently say that it’s nonsense.
If you focus on your own life and not live other people’s lives, you will be much better off and achieve greater things. Karate is a self-improvement platform because you’ll overcome countless obstacles throughout your training course.
Visual inspection showed that four participants improved their global self-esteem.
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While that’s an exception and not a rule, we now know that it can work. If you learn karate, you’ll learn to fight, and you may improve your self-esteem on the way. As a result, it’s a fantastic self-development tool.
Again, like the previous fitness benefit, your self-esteem is your mental health. By now, we’re familiar with the link between solid mental health and physical condition. As such, your self-esteem will improve your physical being.
#7- Building muscle mass
The last fitness benefit of karate is building muscle mass. I decided to list this result lastly because of a couple of reasons. However, the primary one being that most people’s main purpose is not to build muscle. Instead, they prefer to develop themselves or learn to fight.
That said, building muscle mass through karate training is possible and had been done. Nonetheless, you’ll need to have a proper diet if you wish to build muscle with martial arts. For example, if you only eat sugary foods, you won’t build muscle and most likely produce body fat.
However, I’m no dietician. So, let’s examine the take of a professional. I encourage you to read the following article to learn how to build muscle mass.
Karate involves many muscle groups and tears them. Then, when you consume the proper foods, your muscles will recover while you sleep. That process is called Hypertrophy. If you can consistently use your muscles intensely, you’ll be causing consistent hypertrophy and thus build more muscle (bro science alert).
These are the 7-most prominent benefits karate has to offer. If you’re interested in any of them and think they can improve your life, I encourage you to start training as soon as possible. If you do, you’ll reap the benefits sooner and thus improve your future-self.
Is Karate a Good Exercise?
How do you measure a good exercise? Are martial arts suitable for improving your physical condition. Let’s examine whether karate is a good exercise and, if so, what makes it to be that.
Karate is a suitable exercise for improving your physical condition, and thus it’s a fantastic workout. It improves your physical condition by giving you a platform to increase your heart rate using complicated movements, such as punching, kicking, and many other complex drills.
It all comes down to what your heart rate is like. For example, when you run, your HR will be higher than when resting. As a result, you’ll burn more calories and improve your overall physical condition.
Does Karate Count as a Workout?
Karate counts as a workout because it includes intense training you can consistently do-which allows your heart rate to increase above the average. As a result, you’ll burn plenty of calories and use many of your muscle groups, allowing you to improve your physical condition.
Also, karate involves many complex movements—meant to teach you fighting techniques. On the physical side, you’ll be moving your body in many places and positions. As a result, you’ll be drastically bettering both your mental and physical health by training karate.
Final Words
To end this article, I want to show my appreciation for martial arts, and particularly karate. It has changed the lives of many people and positively impacted their well-being.
By training in karate and dedicating yourself to the art, you’ll be on your way to seeing many physical benefits, such as better endurance and burning more calories. These will all help you to improve your overall physical condition and give you a boost in your fitness journey.
I’ve seen plenty of success from martial arts training, and as a result, I highly encourage everyone to start training in one.
If you enjoyed reading this article, I highly encourage you to read another piece of mine about the best martial arts you should learn. If you want to choose the most suitable fighting style for your needs and desires, I recommend checking it out.