Karate Fitness and food

Karate can be practiced as an art, self-defense, or as a combat sport. Traditional karate places emphasis on self-development. Modern Japanese style training emphasizes the psychological elements incorporated into a proper kokoro (attitude) such as perseverance, fearlessness, virtue, and leadership skills. Sport karate places emphasis on exercise and competition. Weapons are an important training activity in some styles of karate.

Karate training is commonly divided into three:

1.            Kihon (basics or fundamentals),

2.            Kata (forms), and

3.            Kumite (sparring).

Self-defense is not the only motive behind karate. It is not just for learning; it’s also great for our overall health and well-being. It tunes our body, mind, and soul spiritually with perfect practice.

What I have learned in class can easily be applicable in real life; I experience it. I shall not just learn about ways to defend against an attack on the street or in other situations, we will also learn attitudes and strategies for avoiding the worst-case scenarios from the day-to-day practice lessons at our dojo.

Fitness Benefits of Karate

Karate offers a wide variety of exercises that are excellent for fitness! Karate is a high-aerobic activity that utilizes virtually every muscle group in our body. Our endurance, muscle tone, flexibility, sense of balance, as well as our overall raw strength will improve through the practice of karate. Karate offers a complete full-body workout, helping with weight loss and overall health and fitness.

Health Benefits of Karate

Many practitioners can attest to the incredible health properties of karate and will tell us that by training karate, we have never felt as good in our entire lives.

Karate will definitely help us with achieving our fitness goals and getting a healthy, flexible, agile, and robust body. Karate consists of a series of dynamic offensive and defensive techniques using all parts of the body to our maximum advantage.

Mental Benefits of Karate

We will discover numerous physical and mental benefits of engaging in karate. Karate will help to develop self-confidence, self-esteem, mental toughness, and resilience.

All these mental benefits can then be applied in our everyday life and will make us a better, well-balanced person. Karate improves our mental health because it teaches us how to meditate and draw upon our spiritual energy.

Karate breathing 

The correct karate breathing is a technique to learn and practice. Let us focus only on the proper breathing to adopt during striking or blocking. Learning how to breathe correctly will directly affect our punching power, speed, stability, and endurance.

a.  Proper breathing technique - Most people breathe using the upper parts of their lungs, known as intercostal breathing. That way, inhaling and exhaling are done in the top body; the lower body does not participate. As air is breathed out, those parts become weak and empty. That’s a very shallow and superficial way to breathe. Actually, it’s the same breath a sick person uses. That’s not what karateka practice. In karate and Zen meditation, another type of breathing called diaphragm breathing is taught. Young children and animals naturally breathe this way. Diaphragmatic breathing is a deep “lower-body” the breathing technique that makes use of a large internal muscle at the bottom of the lungs called the diaphragm. This muscle can be activated through the tensing and relaxing of our hara or tanden.

b.  Breathing when punching - Proper breath gives life to our punch. Karate breathing teaches us to inhale (breathe in) through the nose and exhale (breathe out) through our mouth when we execute our punch. The important point is to exhale whenever we strike and whenever we move for defense. When we exhale, contract our abdominal muscles a bit, and push down on our lower belly, we feel our navel moving toward our spine. Exhaling this way while punching will root our body firmly into the ground and allow us to transfer more mass into our strike. When we are not attacking or defending, just maintain natural breathing; don’t mainly focus on exhaling and just keep a calm, controlled breath.

c.  Breathing benefits in karate: There are numerous benefits of proper breathing for a karateka. The mental and physical benefits are mentioned here:

i.    Mental benefits:

•           Enhances concentration and focus,

•           Gives more mental clarity and alertness,

•           Supports to calm down the mindfulness,

•           Helps to control our emotions,

•           Feels more energetic.

ii.    Physical benefits:

•           Supports in fighting fatigue,

•           Enhances physical endurance,

•           Relieves pain,

•           Develops proper biomechanics,

•           Better posturing,

•           Enhances acceleration,

•           Supports in transferring mass into our strike,

•           Faster and powerful punches,

•           Develops our ki.

 

Food and Martial Artists

Food plays a big part in just how fit we can be. But martial artists and other athletes don’t eat the same as everyone else. They have different physical requirements for their bodies and so must follow a very different set of dietary and nutritional rules. One of the goals of these athletes is to ensure that they have plenty of solid muscle, so they are always striving to achieve this. They are usually depleting nutrients and carbs at an unusually high rate and burning up their energy reserves. In short, they are pushing their bodies to the limit and beyond.

When it comes to physical stress, one of the most stress-inducing sporting activities for the human body is rigorous martial arts training. With this kind of intense training, we are focusing on agility, speed, strength, and endurance all at the same time. Along with the significant physical demands this places on the body, mental stress can also be significant. This means that a martial artist’s mind has to be just as sharp and fit as his body to execute masterful fighting techniques at quick speeds.

Criteria for martial artists, choices of food:

•           High protein,

•           Vitamins, fibers, minerals,

•           Avoid junk foods,

•           Moderate amount of high-carb food is needed for energy but avoid eating a lot.