Its Never Too Late
It’s never too late to start this journey of self discovery. Even as adults we can often feel overwhelmed at the thought starting martial arts. Regardless of how old you are there’s no downside for you to be physically active. In fact health professionals agree, just how important it is for you to maintain your physical and mental health through exercise.
When you think about we generally fit into one of three categories. Those who never stopped training, who exercise intermittently and those that don’t train at all. Although there are pros and cons for each category. We all must realise that aging creates for us unique challenges. But also even greater opportunities.
Remember it’s never too late to improve yourself.
UNDERSTANDING THE 11 COMPONENTS OF FITNESS
CARDIOVASCULAR ENDURANCE
Cardiovascular endurance or aerobic fitness is defined as how well your heart and lungs function. By supplying adequate amounts of oxygen, so you are able to exercise at optimal levels. Either at medium or high intensity for a longer period of time. Improving your cardiovascular endurance will make it easy to live your life to its fullest. It will also lessen your risk of diseases such as diabetes, heart disease or stroke.
MUSCULAR ENDURANCE
Muscular endurance is defined as the ability of a specific muscle or muscle group to repeat an exercise with submaximal resistance. By using weights or even your own body weight, for a long period of time. It’s never too late to improve your fitness.
MUSCULAR STRENGTH
Muscular strength is defined as the amount of force you can put out or the amount of weight that you can lift. Muscle-strengthening exercise, sometimes referred to as weight training, is an exercise or activity that includes the use of weight machines, resistance bands or hand-held weights. Even your own body weight such as doing push-ups or sit-ups can be greatly beneficial.
FLEXIBILITY
Flexibility is defined as the ability of muscles, joints, soft tissues to move through an unrestricted and pain-free range of motion. It involves your body to stretch, lengthen, and contract without limitations, allowing for smooth and efficient movement. Benefits include improving your performance in physical activities, reducing injuries and increasing muscle blood flow.
BODY COMPOSITION (Its never too late)
Body composition is defined as the ratio of fat to muscle, bone, and other tissues in a person’s body. Individuals with optimal body composition are a lot healthier, move more efficiently and generally live more enriching lives.
SPEED
Speed is defined as the rate at which something moves. This also relates to power, force and the mass of the object the force has acted upon. During exercise, you maximally activate your muscles and muscle fibers, which in general improves your aerobic capacity. While also increasing myoglobin, which is a protein found in your muscles.
Speed is important in activities such as running, speed skating, cycling. But also in a variety of other sports like tennis, martial arts or swimming. It’s never too late.
POWER
Power is defined as the ability to exert force in the shortest period of time. The physical formula of power is Power = Force x Power = Work / time. Some of the benefits to increasing power are being able to move faster, Improves mobility and Increasing strength reducing the risk of falls as we age. It’s never too late.
AGILITY
Agility is defined as the ability to rapidly change body direction either by accelerating or decelerating. This is applied by balance, strength, coordination and also skill level. Benefits can include mind/body connection, improving balance and coordination.
BALANCE
Balance is defined as an ability to stay upright or stay in control of one’s body movements. There are two known types of balance: static and dynamic. Benefits can include body awareness, joint stability and injury prevention.
COORDINATION
Coordination is defined as the ability to select the right muscle at the right time with proper intensity to achieve proper action. Basketball Players have to have amazing hand eye coordination. In order to dribble the ball down the court in order to score a shot. Benefits include body awareness, better balance, strengthens muscles and supports mental health.
REACTION TIME
Reaction Time is defined as a time interval between perceiving a signal and reacting to it, such as the beginning of a race. It can influenced by genetics, age, dedication and can be improved with the right training. Benefits include increased reactions like defending against an attacker and faster reflexes.
TRAINING AS YOU GROW OLDER
After training in martial arts from a young age, but stopped due to work schedule. As going to a dojo was incredibly challenging to maintain due to shift work. Never did I imagine I would the restart my martial arts journey at 40, and fell in love with it all over again. Now I have reached my 2nd brown belt in karate and train with people over half my age. So I feel I can provide you with some insight. I admit I certainly at times feel the effects of getting older like, being stiffer and it does take more time to recover. But overtime by adding yoga and weights into my training, the younger practitioners can’t believe I am so strong and flexible.
In this post, I will share with you some tips on how to maximise your training as you get older. If you have decided to begin or even restart your martial arts journey like I did. It is important to think about our body preservation as the likelihood of injury increases. When we are younger, we don’t think about these kind of things.
Remember a person’s age is just a number. Don’t let it dictate what you can do or what you want to achieve. Now let’s dive into ways of keeping you healthy and safe. While you train into your 40s and beyond.
WHAT I HAVE LEARNT (ITS NEVER TOO LATE)
One of the most important thing to ensure your success in training is to protect your joints: knees, hips, ankles, shoulders, wrists, and elbows. The function of these joints is what allows us go about our everyday lives without any pain or discomfort.
In karate, learning how to maintain proper stances is crucial to preserving knees, hips, and ankles. The majority of practitioners who have done martial arts for long periods of time and have ever used bad technique. Will have endured pain in these joints.
If practicing any kicks that require rotation such as a roundhouse kick, be sure to pivot fully and use the correct technique. By not doing this, it will apply torsion and tension to your lower joints.
When you are learning any new skills in martial arts, make sure that you focus on perfecting the technique. It is important to add power gradually and remember to be patient with yourself. If to don’t use the proper technique, then you run the risk of damaging your joints.
Also regardless if you’re throwing punches, kicking, or executing any other strike. Never snap the joints. Keep your muscles loose as you follow through (otherwise you will lose power). But tense the muscles upon impact as you do not want to over rotate the joint.
Doing any type of jumping exercise, make sure to land softly. Many people think that as you age you should not participate in jumping exercises. Because you will damage the knees. This is not true if done correctly. Keeping the knees slightly bent when landing and try to land on the balls of the feet rather than flat footed.
While martial artist come in all shapes and sizes. It is important to maintain a healthy lifestyle your joints will love you for it.
MAKE SURE YOU WARM UP AND COOL DOWN
As you are probably aware, when we get older our bodies also appear to get stiffer. Therefore, it is essential to do a thorough warmup. You can’t just show up to class and jump right into sparring. A thorough warmup for martial arts needs to include getting the muscles warm through brisk movement followed by light stretching of each muscle.
Also it’s equally important too cool down after training. Stretching the muscles that were used primarily in the training session will greatly assist in your recovery.
ADD SOME YOGA OR STRETCHING
Unfortunately, I found the little bit of stretching we do in class warmups and cool downs didn’t cut it. So I suggest finding a full stretching workout or better yet add some yoga a couple of times a week. It honestly does wonders at preserving your body and aiding in recovery. I never gave yoga chance when I was younger. However, over several years since I started. I have seen a vast improvement in my overall fitness when I included a weekly yoga workout. You see it’s never too late.
WEIGHT TRAINING
In addition to yoga or stretching, especially as you age it is important to include some weight or resistance training. No you don’t need to be a body builder or gym junkie. But increasing your muscular strength is important in your martial arts training, but also your health. Stronger muscles will ultimately help stabilize the body. Do not skip leg day! Strong leg muscles help preserve the knee joints as you maintain stances. Building muscles also helps your metabolism which leads to burning more calories and maintaining a healthy weight.
STRENGTHENING YOUR CORE AND BACK MUSCLES
Ensuring your back is strong is just as important as preserving your joints. You often hear people complain of back pain more frequently as they get older. To help keep your back strong remember the following:
- Strengthen the entire core: upper/lower abdomen, obliques, lower back, etc.
- Stretch the muscles of entire core
- Maintain good posture
You can’t just only do sit-ups to strengthen the core. There are a variety of exercises and stretches that need to be done to completely work the entire mid section . Also If you are an office worker, it’s imperative that you maintain a good posture while seating and also make sure you get up every hour to move around.
LISTEN TO YOUR BODY (ITS NEVER TOO LATE)
When we are younger, we probably all had a rolled ankle or pulled muscle. It’s not as injury where you can just “walk it off”. Worst case we might need a couple of days rest, in order to heal. As we get older, we need to allow more time for our body to heal. This is why you need to listen to your body. Giving it the rest it needs by taking breaks from strenuous activity from time to time. Be sure you get enough sleep at night. I know sometimes this is can be difficult, but it is very important for your overall health. We heal when we sleep. Getting enough sleep will also help keep energy levels higher and improve mental health.
If you have a nagging injury that won’t go away, be sure to modify any exercises or techniques so as not to exasperate it or cause further injury.
BALANCED DIET
Finally, I have also learned that a proper diet has a huge impact on how you feel and how you train. Long gone are the days of staying up all night and eating pizza. I actually stopped drinking alcohol altogether, when I started training again. But you really only need to limit your alcohol consumption and eat healthy foods. As this significantly boost energy levels as well as limit inflammation in the body.
FINAL THOUGHTS ON ITS NEVER TOO LATE
I really hope this article has given you some valuable insights on how to start your martial arts journey with confidence. Training in martial arts as you get older is entirely possible if you take the necessary steps. Just like getting a black belt, if it was easy, everyone would do it.
Martial arts a beginners guide