Undergoing martial arts training has a lot of advantages. In fact, many people choose to undertake such martial arts as endeavor for the sole purpose of achieving those advantages. To someone who is bullied in school, it may provide them the necessary skills for self defense. Moreover, martial arts training might serve as an avenue for a working mother to relieve stress from the responsibilities of being mom and work.
This makes martial arts training enticing to most people. There are just a lot of things you can benefit from it. Therefore, it’s very important for an individual to identify and understand his motive before he starts training. Your motivations are the important fuel that will help you in pursuing and learning martial arts. Inversely, it will be difficult to even start and get committed to learning martial arts if you are uncertain of your motivation in the first place.
Your motivations will dictate your progress in training. For instance, an individual seeking to lose weight martial arts will work hard in the physical component of training since it’s the aspect closest to his motivation. In order to understand this further, I’ve quoted in the succeeding sections a portion of an article on artofmanliness.com that discusses the importance of motive before starting martial arts training.
If you’re wondering if you have the right motive for getting involved, rest assured, there is no necessary motive. Your motive can be very specific, like, “I’ve always wanted to learn to defend myself.” It can seem silly, such as, “I’ve always loved kung fu movies.” It’s probably a combination of these things — just admit them!
The simple truth is most martial arts are physical fitness regimens that come from warrior traditions of various cultural backgrounds, and the benefits of them are, besides the building of a sound body and a set of self-defense skills that you may, God willing, never use, a sound mind and the development of your character as a person. Some martial arts articulate this; some don’t, but most share these basic qualities.
It’s also true that your motive for continuing in the martial arts may be quite different than the motive you started with. You may start martial arts because you really want to build up your confidence; you may continue because it becomes your way of life.
