“Martial arts is one of those unique activities that helps you improve your overall well being, not just in learning important skills that could keep you safe, but also in enhancing your subconscious movements.”
Martial arts is one of those unique activities that helps you improve your overall well being, not just in learning important skills that could keep you safe, but also in enhancing your subconscious movements.
I don’t know about you, but before I started martial arts I was rather clumsy. Granted, I was still a 12 year old kid, but I’d often trip over my own shoes and find myself stumbling more often than not. Even my demeanor was different; I had poor posture due to trying to avoid eye contact with others, and I physically wasn’t able to talk out loud if no one else was talking. A lot of it was due to strong anxiety which I still suffer with, but without realizing it I was already beginning to change the way my body works when I began martial arts.
With constant hyung practice, I learned to make each step count; any extra unintentional movement wastes energy and time. This tremendously improved my balance, as I had to learn to be in total control of my weight while moving through the sequences. Along with stretching and building muscle in my shoulders, hyung helped my posture as well. If you aren’t constantly keeping your body upward with your head stacked above your waist, your balance gets terribly thrown off and you get a lot of unwanted extra movement.
The coolest part for me though, is usually almost 9 times out of 10 if something is dropped and I’m nearby, I’ll be able to catch it as it falls, before it hits the ground. I don’t even have to think about it and I’m already grabbing it, it comes automatically at this point. I believe this comes from all the targeting and practiced controlled movements, I can move my hands a lot faster and my reflexes are way sharper than before. Not to mention shi sun, the focus of your eyes, that we practice throughout all training helped not only my eye contact but also my ability to be more aware of my surroundings. I’m able to detect an object on the verge of falling and save it relatively quickly.
I’m not saying I have superpowers from martial arts or anything, but I commonly refer to this sensation as my “spidey sense”. Probably because Spiderman is my favorite superhero, but sometimes it really does feel like I have a small fraction of his reaction time and coordination, at least compared to pre-karate SpiderAna.
