Bri­an Chin Le­ung

Karate is an an­cient form of hand to hand com­bat that has its roots firm­ly em­bed­ded in Ok­i­nawa and Japan.It is in­ter­est­ing to note that many of the old karate mas­ters en­joyed great longevi­ty, and lived in­to their late 80s and ear­ly 90s. This is not sur­pris­ing when you analyse the rig­or­ous train­ing that forged strong hearts and iron-like bod­ies, in ad­di­tion to pro­duc­ing calm and serene minds, that had to pass on vol­umes of in­for­ma­tion to fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.To­day, karate is prac­ticed both for self-de­fense and as a sport, but there are clear dis­tinc­tions be­tween the two op­tions, de­pend­ing on the choice of the in­di­vid­ual.How­ev­er, re­gard­less of your choice, the com­mon de­nom­i­na­tor is the many phys­i­cal ben­e­fits that the dis­ci­pline of karate has to of­fer.

Phys­i­cal ben­e­fit­sof Karate

When prac­ticed un­der prop­er su­per­vi­sion, karate builds strength, speed, pow­er, co-or­di­na­tion, bal­ance, tim­ing, aer­o­bic and anaer­o­bic phys­i­cal con­di­tion­ing. A class is usu­al­ly di­vid­ed in­to the prac­tice of ki­hon (ba­sics), ka­ta (forms) and ku­mite (spar­ring).

• Leg mus­cles

Dur­ing the prac­tice of ki­hon, the stu­dent is made to stay in deep-root­ed stances that strength­en his leg mus­cles and pro­vide a sta­ble base from which he can ex­e­cute pow­er­ful tech­niques.

• Core mus­cles

The act of ro­tat­ing and thrust­ing your hips dur­ing punch­ing and kick­ing re­quires ac­ti­va­tion of your core mus­cles to help sta­bilise mul­ti­ple forces. As a re­sult you de­vel­op a strong core.

• Up­per body mus­cle

Punch­ing, strik­ing and block­ing re­quires the use of many mus­cle groups in­clud­ing your del­toids, pec­torals, tri­ceps and latis­simus dor­si.

For ex­am­ple, the straight punch re­quires you to quick­ly move your fist from the hip po­si­tion to­wards the tar­get. This act of mov­ing your hand in a straight line, away from your body, will re­quire con­trac­tion of your pec­torals and tri­ceps, while your latis­simus dor­si works to stop your shoul­ders from ris­ing dur­ing the punch; the del­toids will al­so con­tract strong­ly on im­pact.When the stu­dent is taught kime (fo­cus), he al­so learns to con­tract many mus­cle groups si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, so that at the mo­ment of im­pact, his re­laxed, flu­id, mov­ing body then con­tracts and hits the tar­get like a rock, with mul­ti­ple forces be­ing uni­fied and chan­neled through the punch­ing arm, as in the ex­e­cu­tion of an oi-tzu­ki (step­ping punch.)This reg­u­lar con­trac­tion/re­lax­ation of all body mus­cles brings over­all mus­cle tone to the body.

Aer­o­bic and anaer­o­bic con­di­tion­ing

Karate by na­ture is ex­treme­ly ex­plo­sive, and a five-sec­ond as­sault on your op­po­nent, in­volv­ing a se­ries of kicks and punch­es, can send you in­to anaer­o­bic mode where­by you are func­tion­ing at about 90 per cent of your max­i­mum heart rate.On the oth­er hand, if you are con­cerned about your car­dio­vas­cu­lar sys­tem and wish to build aer­o­bic con­di­tion­ing, where­by your heart rate stays at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 130 beats per minute (bpm), then you can con­tin­u­ous­ly re­peat any giv­en ka­ta with­out ap­ply­ing kime (fo­cus) for about 40 min­utes.If you ap­ply full kime to any ka­ta, the in­ten­si­ty may send you in­to your anaer­o­bic zone and on­ly al­low you to re­peat that ka­ta once or twice be­fore rest is need­ed.If you are a karate­ka, the con­di­tion of your body re­flects how much you have been train­ing. Keep Train­ing.