what is the martial art lifestyle? simply it is martial art training as a way of life , that doesn’t necessarily mean that you do it for a job or that you are a fighter. it just means that you train everyday . The martial art training becomes like breathing or brushing your teeth. If you are feeling good you train , if you are not feeling good you train, when you want to train you train and when you don’t want to train you train. whether it is winter or summer, too hot or too cold you train! That is the martial art lifestyle.
The main point is to understand why is this done.
The reason is that there is nothing you could do which would have as much as a positive effect as daily training would have. Higher levels of feel good neuro chemicals , better physical condition, higher energy levels, stronger willpower and better emotional regulation to name a few.
Some people would say that only the highly disciplined would be able to become martial artists. But it’s more the other way round, once you decide to go on that path you will slowly start to become disciplined. Martial art training is a direct road to having strong will power, the more you do it the more your will power grows.
Thousands of years ago people had to train martial art just to stay alive beacuse they literally had to fight to survive. Nothing has changed, it’s just that now the things we fight against are not people trying to kill us. The biggest killers are disease, depression, lonliness and the stress of modern life.
So now we still need to train hard more than ever, it is simply not in our nature to not do hard physical exercise. Of course many people in the modern world are completely unfit, overweight and lack any kind of physical exercise. But then that is why people are dying of disease, depressed and miserable. People even have to take drugs to feel good. When you train hard everyday you will be high naturally beacuse of the amount of endorphins released through exercise.
Martial art as a lifestyle is actually blissful , because no matter how hard the training may be it is totally counterbalanced by the inner strength, increased energy and total calm you feel after training. So ultimately the martial art lifestyle is the perfect balance of relaxation and all out physical exertion. Just like waves go out and come back in again , just like day gives way to night . We too follow a cycle, if we sit around doing nothing its good for a while but then it becomes laziness and lethargy. So you have to get up and train hard , then you feel refreshed , energised and you go and do something and then when your tired you go and lie down and repeat. This is a good lifestyle , it is a life of discipline and improvement and it is a life where you have a lot of energy to do whatever you want. if you have cultivated the inner strength through hard physical training it will spread to other areas of life . Many people never learned in school how to focus beacuse school is boring and no body cares about what is being taught. But martial art training is a very direct and real, everyone can understand the meaning.
Whether you are doing a MuayThai kickboxing class, or doing Brazilian jujitsu you have to dig deep. You are fighting against tiredness at the same time as trying to learn difficult skills which often take thousands of repetitions to get right. Through this your ability to control your body and mind massively improves. And you start to develop the mechanisms for learning difficult skills through sheer willpower, focus and repetition. There are many kids that have trouble concentrating in school because nobody taught them how to. But then through the focus learned in martial art they actually start doing better in school. There are other examples of people who struggle to lose weight or stick to an exercise program but then after doing martial art they develop the discipline to carry through until the goal is reached.
Martial art training changes people in a positive way , you ultimately become a stronger version of yourself physically and mentally .
Wi
