Nowadays increasingly more females are taking up karate as an exercise activity.
As a female Soo Bahk Do (karate) practitioner and instructor myself, I celebrate this growing trend.
It’s great to see more females step forward to undergo a confidence boost and physical transformation to realise their true potential through karate.
In this article, I share my top 5 reasons how karate can add value to your life.
So, if you’re curious how karate would benefit you over other martial arts and gym classes, read on!
1. Health and fitness with clear progression
Although gym and exercise classes can be fun and are quite popular for females, what keeps our motivation for exercise over the longer term is goal-setting with clear ways to mark our progress. This is exactly what karate, and our Soo Bahk Do style in particular, have to offer.
Through the carefully designed belt system, our goal is to meet a certain standard in techniques before we can progress to new content. Since karate training is mostly a full-body cardio and bodyweight strength and conditioning activity, we notice boosts in our fitness and adaptations to our body in the space of weeks as we rep out drills and work on our flexibility to improve our techniques.
2. Self-defense
This is perhaps an obvious choice!
It’s a given that by learning karate, you’d learn many self-defense skills that can be used in various situations. This makes karate a great choice for females to feel more confident going about their daily life. Of course, the ease of applying these skills come over time through repetition.
It’s important to note that self-defense can be applied to both the physical and mental dimensions.
Physically, from the Soo Bahk Do style at least, you’ll learn how to strike and block effectively using arms and legs, break out from locks and control a situation, and reduce your reaction time.
From a mental viewpoint, you’ll have confidence to address situations of conflict in a calmer manner. Through training, we emphasise that physical confrontation should be used as a last resort and support your development to help diffuse a situation to reduce the chance of escalation.
3. Improves overall wellness
Through karate training, you’ll find that it’s a perfect outlet to expel the demands and stresses of daily life as you burn off energy, punch and kick pads and practise drills with a partner. Not only that, you’ll learn breathing techniques that’s perfect to keep your cardio up for longer and to bring calmness to the mind when we do meditation. Speaking of meditation, this short part of our class invites self reflection and brings improved focus as thoughts become clearer.
4. Break your mental barriers
As females, many of us have grown up with a lack of confidence in our own abilities. As adults, we typically put our needs and personal growth aside to support others. Even for the younger females of today, media outlets and peer pressure are known to portray an image of females that can be quite damaging to self-esteem.
Through karate, you undertake an individual and collective journey to reaching your black belt and beyond. When faced with some challenges in training, you’ll have greater awareness of the mental barriers that you tell yourself. In a supportive club environment like we have at Dojang X, you’ll work towards facing and surpassing the many things you’ve told yourself that you could not do. The result will leave you feeling energised and confident to apply this to other parts of your life.
5. Your supportive and social community
In our Soo Bahk Do style, you’ll learn karate in a friendly environment. We know that many females are put off by the perceived aggression, hard contact and occasionally ego-fuelled environments associated with some martial arts. Be confident to know that we’re completely the opposite!
People are drawn to the Soo Bahk Do karate style for its accessibility to learn effective martial arts techniques in a non-judgemental environment. It’s very common in our style to have people of all ages, backgrounds and stages in life train together. Especially at Dojang X, many family members train together as a special way of bonding whilst both are learning things that are completely new!
Wrap up
Taking up karate will shape your life’s journey in more ways beyond a weekly activity. How it does will depend on what you’re searching for as the starting point and the club environment facilitated by the instructor and other members. It can be almost guaranteed that you’ll quickly discover just how much depth this activity has compared to other exercise activities around!
We know it can be quite daunting to try something new for the first time. After all, everyone who trains in karate has once been exactly in your position right now.
The best way is to just give a class a go and see what you think. Most reputable martial arts clubs offer a free trial class to help you see if it’s something that’s right for you.
We offer a free trial class at Dojang X if you live around Abingdon, UK.
