Signing up for martial arts in Frisco, Prosper, McKinney or Little Elm might be exactly what you need to meet your weight loss goals. Some martial arts are high intensity, making them great for burning fat and losing weight. Examples of martial arts that can help you to reach your fitness goals include Muay Thai, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Boxing and Kickboxing.
To give you a better understanding of how martial arts can help you to reach your fitness goals, let’s take a closer look at how weight loss and weight gain takes place.
The body is powered by energy derived from food called calories. These calories power all your movements and bodily functions. When you consume more calories than your body needs to perform the day’s activities, the excess is stored in your body as fat. This fat can be used for energy at a later time when extra calories are needed.
The opposite needs to occur to lose weight. When you are not getting all the calories your body needs from food, it is forced to tap into your fat reserves. This leads to fat loss and weight loss.
How Martial Arts Help
Since we now know a caloric deficit is needed to lose weight, it becomes easy to understand how burning up to 1,000 calories during a one-hour Muay Thai class can be beneficial for weight loss. For best results, physical activities like martial arts should be combined with a low-calorie diet when weight loss is the goal.
The benefits of adding martial arts training to your weight loss fitness program include:
1) Never gets boring
Starting a new fitness plan is not the difficult part, sticking to an exercise regimen for more than a few months is the challenging part. A big reason why this is the case is because many people tend to repeat the same exercises every workout. Run a mile, pump some weights; it all gets old after a while.
Things are completely different with martial arts classes. Each training session is unique since you learn new techniques every time. You never know what to expect before each training session, and that helps to keep you motivated to train. Your eagerness to learn new techniques and practice them will give you all the motivation you need to stay committed to your training and weight loss.
2) Leads to increased fat loss
Training high-intensity martial arts like Muay Thai and wrestling gives you a full-body workout. As a result, your muscles grow and become stronger. That leads to a higher metabolism since muscles require more calories for maintenance than fat tissues do. As a result of your training, your body will burn off fat at a faster rate.
3) Support system
One of the benefits that come with learning any martial art is all the cool training partners you get to interact with. These people will become your new support system, and they will push you towards your weight loss goals.
Some of the people you train with will become life-long friends, and you might even find yourself looking forward to training sessions just for the social interactions.
4) Teaches you the importance of discipline and perseverance
Learning a martial art requires you to be patient as you slowly work your way through the ranks. Without a doubt, you will run into many obstacles on your way, like techniques you can’t seem to figure out regardless of how hard you work on them.
Over time, these same techniques will become muscle memory for you. You’ll be able to execute them without even having to think about what you are doing. The journey teaches you how important it is to remain committed to anything you do. The discipline and commitment you learn from your martial arts classes will carry over to your weight loss goals.
5) Lowers stress levels
Intense activities like training martial arts like Muay Thai leads to the release of dopamine in the brain. This leads to a feeling of relaxation, and it helps to lower your stress levels. Stress is one of the main factors when it comes to weight gain. It leads to the secretion of a hormone called cortisol, which promotes fat build up around the body. Belly fat is the most dangerous type of fat you can have on you, and it has been linked to serious health conditions like diabetes.
Training martial arts will reduce the amount of cortisol being produced by your body, making it easier to burn fat and lose weight.
6) Improved sleep
Physical activities like learning a martial art give your body all the work it needs to feel tired enough to fall asleep at night. People who do not exercise regularly might find themselves having a hard time drifting to sleep at night if their body does not feel tired enough. This is more likely to be the case when the person lives a sedentary lifestyle and spends most of their time sitting down at work.
Not getting decent sleep at night limits your body’s ability to repair itself. It can also throw your metabolism off. It can leave you feeling tired during the day, which makes you more likely to break away from your diet. Well-rested people tend to show better judgment when it comes to meal choices, while fatigued people tend to crave sugar-rich foods and beverages.
It’s A Simple Science
Losing weight is easy. It is simply a matter of making sure you are consuming fewer calories than your body needs each day. This will force your body to tap into your body fat for calories, and the pounds will start coming off. Intense workouts like learning a martial art make it significantly easier to burn those calories off.
If you’re looking for the most fun way to get into the best shape of your life, while also learning real-world self-defense, give martial arts a try!