Sports. What do you think of when you hear this word? Whether it may be football or cricket, rugby or tennis, there’s a large range of things that it can cover. However, for most people, martial arts isn’t the idea at the top of their head that springs to mind when they hear this. Of course, they are counted as sports, but why exactly do people do them?
It's an interesting question that undoubtedly can apply to all sports of course, but with martial arts there’s something slightly different. After all, in no other sport do you gain points for attacking your opponent through a well-placed punch to the face or a fancy spinning kick landing cleanly on their thigh. Why do people even participate in them?
The answer that may first come up is of course, to fight. You never know when you can be attacked on the street, and protecting yourself is vital. However, a general rule of thumb is that those who can fight always avoid fights. Social media shows lots of methods from ‘practitioners’ who claim to show ways of disarming an attacker, but once you actually start learning, you realise that the best fight is the one that never happened.
And it’s not like all combat sports are particularly safe, either. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a neurodegenerative disease directly caused by repeated trauma to the head, and is common among MMA fighters in their later years, and many other of such diseases (such as Muhammad Ali, who famously contracted Parkinson’s) related to brain health. Of course, this is on the more extreme side of the argument, but it no doubt is true.
So, then, why do people engage in martial arts and combat sports?
As with any other sport, there is the aspect of personal fitness. Boxing, for example, keeps you light on your feet even though it may seem like it only works the arms. Taekwondo can help with hip mobility in later life due to its wealth of spinning kicks involving such. And regardless of what martial art you choose, it helps immensely with cardiovascular health when you are intense training or sparring.
Then of course, there is discipline. Martial arts (to varying extents of course) teach significant discipline, whether it ranges from the religiously followed Muay Thai (in Thailand of course) or the extremes of state of mind and the kinds of stuff that you find in movies. Even without the philosophical aspects, the discipline to take blows and calculate a perfectly landed shot is far more significant than it looks on the surface, and the physical strain of consistent training is rewarding but demanding.
And, while such situations are unlikely, it is always good to be able to fight properly (I know I’m stating the obvious, but stay with me here) for the times when it may be needed, whether for self-defence or to injure someone, even if not to the extremes of what you may find for example in Leithwei, a combat sport originally used on the battlefield in Myanmar and Thailand.
There are a wealth of other reasons why people may take up martial arts, whether it be for those mentioned or not, but there is definitely more under the surface than the ruse of mindless punches in the name of self-defence.
