Is Martial Arts Bad for you

People are told by Nanny State Britain that the nation is getting too fat and the population as a whole should exercise; a good thing you might say send them to me for a reasonable fee I will get them fit. The thing is that all martial arts instructors try to train their new students as they were once taught themselves, bunny hops up stairs, now banned as an unsafe exercise, deep squats past ninety degrees, perfect way to ruin your knees. Our generation, I class those who have been training over thirty years, learned our art from the first or second generation of Japanese instructors. People in this country had memories of their sons and husbands fighting and being killed in the Second World War against Japanese troops. The instructors who came from Japan were aware of the hostility they would face so the training was geared to showing their mastery of Japanese martial arts, judo, karate or aikido. The other thing in Japan is the majority of students only train seriously while they are at university, its a narrow window of three to four years from passing the very competitive exams to get into university and after graduating and becoming a "salaryman", working for a large Japanese Business, where they will be too busy to train seriously. The student at university is in his late teens early twenties at his physical peak therefore can do the crazy exercises to his body that someone in his thirties and forties will not be able to do.

Greater strain is put on the body if you become a competitive player trying for success in the sporting field, you will do more than the average player to win that is why you have the success you are not ordinary but extraordinary, this will put strain on your body especially the load bearing joints, hips, knees and elbows. When your coach asks you to do two laps of the field you will do four; if you were told that following a training regime no matter how spartan would bring you the winners laurel leaves you would do it, to achieve the first position on the winners podium. You as a player want the applause from your peers; the interest from women drawn to your fame; the celebrity status you achieve in your narrow sporting field.

Perhaps you were told to bulk up to achieve success, you visit gymnasium to lift weights to build muscle. As you train and train you are not achieving the muscle growth of these body builders, you discover their secret-steroids. For money you will be supplied with animal muscle building chemical products from India and the Third World Countries. You take a course of these products but you did not achieve the muscle growth you expected because you are extraordinary you will take twice the recommended dose, you can do it. Next thing is your personality changes you suffer from rage at the most trivial things, you develop breasts, acne, testicular atrophy and hair loss. At sporting contests drug testing is becoming mandatory, don't worry your supplier tells you for more money he will supply you with something that cannot be detected yet, human growth hormone harvested from dead people. You are now injecting yourself with insulin to lose weight. One day you keel over and die, the coroner reveals that your heart is twice the normal size caused by long term steroid abuse. People are amazed you were so young and you prided yourself on how fit you were. A sporting fairy story! Perhaps but being a competitive athlete can be bad for your long term health. Thankfully we do not have the problem of athletics or strength events; I hope but too much exercise like every thing can be bad for you. If you teach children you must remember that they are growing so don't ask them to do exercise which puts too much strain on their growing bodies.

Remember the duration of a top flight competitor is ten to twenty years at the most and his career could be over in an instant due to an injury, so always have something else you can do. I once watched a program on Trans World Sport that showed the former Olympic World Wrestling champion of Hungary having to earn his living as a bouncer in a Budapest nightclub, it was the only job he could get previously he had been looked after by the state before the fall of the Berlin Wall.