One piece of news that I hate breaking to people is that joining a martial arts class won’t make them lean, mean and awesome looking. You’d think they’d figure it out by looking at me, but no. It’s something of a common misconception, and I can see where it’s coming from as most high profile martial artists have impressive physiques.

The general idea is, “If these guys are stacked, and these guys do martial arts, then if I do martial arts, I’ll get stacked”. Unfortunately, the world isn’t quite so neat and tidy, and correlation does not imply causation. In other words: it doesn’t work like that.

Where I’m coming from

I first started practising martial arts some time back in 2008, after a long Assassin’s Creed binge. I remember thinking that I wanted to be able to do some of that stuff, and happened to come across a flyer advertising sword fighting lessons. Five minutes later, I had signed up.

At the time I was almost entirely sedentary, and the aftermath of the first couple of lessons was painful. That passed quickly though, and in a few months I was gasping for breath less often – sparring is awesome cardio. I was feeling a lot better, if we don’t count the three days, a few months in, when I tried rapier fighting for the first time and discovered that there were a few muscles I hadn’t used yet. My left buttcheek was not at all amused.

And that was about it – after the initial improvements, there weren’t any significant gains. On the other hand, my body composition hadn’t changed much at all, and I didn’t look much different.

At the time this didn’t bother me particularly, as it wasn’t the reason I was practising. It was only after I had to stop for some months due to a minor surgery – entirely unrelated, and for reasons predating practice – when I had gone up to 82kg that I started to pay attention.

My “what the fuck” moment came when I did a rope test for body fat composition and came up with 25.8% body fat. Today I know that this test isn’t terribly accurate, but the number was enough to get me thinking… and moving. My knee jerk reaction was to start running and eating less while keeping up my training. It kind of worked, and within a year I was down to 62kg.

I was also flabby, short tempered, and liable to blow over in a stiff breeze. Despite being lighter, I was having issues with lack of energy to practice. Clearly, something wasn’t working. That’s when I started to do some homework.

Patterns started coming up. Bruce Lee: strength training. Oyama: strength training. UFC fighters: strength training. It is not a new concept; in the 1300s, the French knight Boucicaut used to follow a regimen of climbing, jumping and running in armour (see Anglo, The Martial Arts of Renaissance Europe). 

It looked like none of the greatest martial artists and fighters relied on martial arts training alone; or rather, they considered strength training to be part and parcel of their art. I picked up a copy of Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training and a barbell, started to learn about such things as progressive overloading, and got down to it.

In the same period I also started reading up on nutrition, particularly through Nerd Fitness and The Art of Expressing the Human Body (Bruce Lee Library), as well as Christensen’s excellent The Fighter’s Body: An Owner’s Manual.

Apart from cutting the sugar, I’d been heading in entirely the wrong direction. This was something of a relief as the crazy self imposed limits I was following meant I was about one over-long office meeting away from cannibalism.

That was about three years ago. Now I’m at 71kg, about 12% body fat, and while I’m nowhere close to a six-pack figure, I’m a lot healthier than I was ten years ago. Hell, I think I could run circles around teenage me all day. Martial arts certainly had a place in my journey; they challenged me, gave me a place to test myself, let me meet people who gave me both encouragement and advice.

However, the real changes were made outside the training hall – daily habits and training apart from martial practice. I’ve given this a lot of thought over the last few years, and came up with the following observations

A couple of hours a week are not enough

Most people do not do much training outside of their classes. That gives them about two hours of practice a week at best, taking into account slack time in class. Two hours of practice a week might be enough for techniques to stick, but it’s very little for the body, especially since…

There is limited resistance

Working against resistance is necessary to develop muscle. Striking arts offer little or no resistance, and even in armed arts, the body adapts very quickly to the weight of the weapon. Besides, most arts emphasise redirecting or going around resistance rather than working against it.

Your practice will get you to a basic level of strength, but you’re going to stay there until you do something above and beyond.

You are training the mind at least as much as the body

Technique training is mostly about programming the brain and nervous system – teaching the brain how to use the body’s resources efficiently. Even someone the age and size of Willie Nelson can still practice and do well, because good technique minimises effort; that’s the exact opposite of what you need to build muscle.

Your day outside training makes a difference

Are you eating good, healthy food? Getting enough rest? Drinking enough water? No amount of training will help if you don’t have the foundations in place. You can’t expect those few hours of practice to clean up the mess you’ve made over the rest of the week.

On the other hand…

As my friend and one of my favourite teachers is fond of saying, “the first technique of martial arts is fitness”.  In other words, being stronger and healthier means you can practice better.

This does fly in the face of a lot of statements I heard from different people who say that physical preparation is not important, for reasons ranging from “technique trumps strength” to “historically, they didn’t do any strength training”. However, it does make a lot of sense.

For starters, we can ignore the last statement because historically, people didn’t sit around all day and eat junk food either, and as noted above, they did strength training anyway – the concept of  progressive overloading has been documented since at least the 6th century BCE. Besides…

You can’t learn much while gasping like a beached fish

I can say from personal experience that following a class is much easier if one’s heart isn’t trying to leave through his nostrils. Physical preparation allows you to stay focused much longer, and absorb more information.

You can practice longer

Again, this is practically a no brainer – the stronger you are, the longer you can train; the longer you train, the better you can learn a technique.

Bruce Lee’s hypothetical man who practised one kick 10,000 times probably didn’t do them all in one session, but longer sessions would certainly let him get to that number much faster.

Skill is great until you’re up against someone equally skilled

While muscling through a technique is lazy, when you’re up against someone who is as skilled as you, it can boil down to who gets tired first, or who can break through first. A better physical preparation will help you there.

It’s useful elsewhere

The circumstances in which you can apply a martial art technique are fairly limited unless you live in an action movie, but physical preparation can help you all day, every day.

Better energy levels, the ability to move heavy stuff without putting out your back, and undoing the effects of a day spent at a desk are far reaching benefits everyone can enjoy.

So, should you practice a martial art?

Martial arts practice carries several health benefits, but if your goal is only getting into shape, do something else – there are many more efficient ways to reach that goal. Otherwise it’s a bit like kayaking to get you better at soccer.

If, on the other hand, you want to practice a martial art, go for it! Martial arts practice is very rewarding in its own right, and it’s great fun!

Image credits

• Images from the Fist of the North Star Animated series (1984)
• Assassin’s Creed 1 screenshot from UbiSoft
• Image from Ridolfo di Capoferro’s “Gran Simulacro dell’Arte e dell’Uso della Scherma“
• Photo of Willie Nelson by Ralph Barrera (AP) retrieved from Time.com