A lot of people take up MMA or martial arts because they want to learn to fight or get better at self defense. What these people may not have on the fore front of their mind is how MMA training can make them healthier individuals and get in great shape. When you start out training MMA or various other martial arts you might not be in the best shape or even be that strong for any matter. Over the course of training the students will develop their body and under go a life change for the better. Here are several ways that training MMA can make you healthy and put you in the best shape of your life.
Increased Strength
Training martial arts requires a lot of total body strength, especially if you have chosen MMA. Students need to be able to throw strikes, lift opponents, and wrestle or grapple with them on the ground. If you are particularly weak when you start you might find these activities and the techniques quite difficult. No matter what MMA school you go to is going to put you through a pretty strenuous training routine.
It doesn’t matter if you want to fight or just want to train in MMA on a more leisurely basis. Expect to do plenty of push ups, burpees, crawling drills, jumping drills, partner drills, and even some drills with weight. Guess what a common side effect of performing these things is? Increased overall strength. Even though you didn’t sign up for a strength training class you got one and over time you will continue to build functional strength because you will work harder and be able to perform more difficult tasks.
Increased Stamina
When you train MMA you are essentially training for a fight (even if you never plan on stepping into a cage) so you should expect to do things that the fighters do on a regular basis. If you aren’t familiar with all the things that go along with this let me enlighten you. Most likely you could wind up running, sparring, rolling (grappling), hitting the pads, hitting the bags, or doing circuit training. In case you didn’t know a typical MMA fight goes 3 – 5 minute rounds which can add up to a lot of time spent doing these activities. The end result will put you in some pretty darn good shape and build your respiratory system as well as your muscular endurance.
Increased Flexibility
By the time you are 60 or 70 you will be lucky if you aren’t creaky and unable to perform some of the most mundane day to day tasks. Training MMA or BJJ will work on your flexibility so that you won’t get hurt during competition or class. This will also cross over into your every day life because increased flexibility means that you run less of a risk of hurting yourself doing something stupid. In class you will stretch your upper and lower body at the beginning and end of each class. Add up all of these times and you should wind up a pretty flexible person.
Conclusion
If you think that the only thing you are going to get out of martial arts is the ability to fight or defend yourself the you better think again. You may not go in there with the mind set that you are going to get in the best shape of your life but it will happen if you put in the work and dedicate yourself to becoming the best martial artist possible.
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