If you train in Martial Arts, you will quickly realize that every class is a physical and mental workout from beginning to end. You will find yourself consistently pushing past your limits. Your story continues -always being built upon, class after class, competition after competition, belt after belt. The same goes for your body in training.
Physical changes you’ll see are weight loss and full-body muscle toning. Your flexibility will increase drastically as well. Your circulation will improve. This will give you an overall feeling of well-being and mood boost. You will learn to have better, precise control over your body overall.
Mentally, you will gain confidence and security in knowing that you can handle any situation. This goes for both on and off the mat. Repeated exposure and practice will keep your mind at ease as you constantly learn what works and what doesn’t.
Self-defense might be regarded as the most obvious benefit of martial arts training. Self-defense is a technical skill, like carpentry or auto mechanics; it is a skill that could be handy to have, one that might be necessary. To some degree, self-defense is a natural and instinctual response of all living things; animals will defend their young with their natural tools (claws and teeth). Similarly, a human being will naturally respond to danger with any kind of self-preservation skills he or she possesses. In martial arts training, a person fine-tunes those skills. It begins with basics, everything in martial arts is rooted in basics; it is the foundation of a martial artist’s education. A person learns what are their natural weapons, how to move your body to defend yourself and from what positions, in what ways the opponent’s body can be manipulated in order to defend yourself from him or her, and in what ways you can keep yourself out of harms way using body parts and body movement.
Finally, martial arts training creates a love for learning and an understanding of the deeper, priceless value of learning. A person is able to tackle problems in very direct and logical ways while also understanding the spontaneous nature of all things in life. Simply put, life is continuous learning, and though many things can take you by surprise, life can be lived fully, completely, totally, and spontaneously. This way of living, i believe, will help one achieve living life to the fullest.