Karate performed Intelligently – Develops Amazing Physical Fitness

Components of fitness – Physical – Karate Skills

• Body Composition:
• Cardiorespiratory (Aerobic) Endurance:
• Muscular Strength:
• Muscular Endurance:
• Muscular Endurance:

Body Composition:

To be the best karate students, as with the general population, a great diet is of monumental significance. A wide variety of foods are something that I doubt most people are concerned with. Rather they choose to eat what is available an then only eat that which has a desirable taste. In the school millions of dollars worth of nutritious foods are dumped into garbage containers.

For many years, I was not concerned with Components of Fitness, I was concerned with skill and personal development. At the beginning of my experiences with Karate, I was searching for an athletic event I could be comprehensively involved in for a lifetime. As I have stated in other posts, I was a good student academically, but I was and still am interested in the benefits and enjoyment movement brings. That is especially true, when the enjoyment is accompanied by personal development.

Most of the time spent practicing alone should be focused on skill development. If your concerned with physical fitness select the component/s you want to increase. Then learn how to design your practicing/training for continuous improvement. Maintaining the component may or may not be different from improvement. An attempt to help increase your understanding will certainly be addressed in the posts on this website.

Cardiorespiratory (Aerobic) Endurance: The ability of the heart and lungs and large muscle groups to sustain continuous exercise using at varying or consistent levels of intensity.

Intelligently designed Karate programs will have aerobic activities within class structures. The classes will include continuous and intense enough movement to increase the heart rate. The increase and maintaining heart rate according to theory brings about Cardiorespiratory (Aerobic) Endurance.

• Karate exercises for Cardiorespiratory (Aerobic) Endurance.
• Performing Kata continuously
• Combination Hand attacking combined with kicking attacks
• Multiple kicking exercises
• Fighting/Sparring

Nontraditional Karate exercises for Cardiorespiratory (Aerobic) Endurance.

• Repeating Sprints refers to repeated running
• High-intensity interval training 
• Fartlek training

Jumping jacks: Link

Burpees: Link

Mountain climbers (running planks): Link

Mountain climbers (standing):

Insanity Workout Link

 

Muscular Strength: The measure of muscular force produced by muscle in one maximum effort.

 

Muscular Endurance: The ability to continue repeated muscular contractions against resistance overtime, while resisting fatigue. Karate 

Karate is about movement. Performance of karate basic techniques is about muscular contractions. Kata (series of prearranged techniques), stages of kumite and drills that sometimes referred to as driving basics will all increase muscular endurance. Starting and Stopping performance of kata is ok for skill development. Repeating the kata without resting is more desirable if the goal is endurance. The continuous movement could also be accomplished by moving from kata to kata. 

Flexibility: Related to range of at joints.

Bill Wallace is known for great kicking.  He spent time to develop flexibility

Performance related components include:

Karate skills: practiced regularly and technically correct lead to higher level performance over time.

Agility: Ability to change directions and making position transitions quickly.

Balance: Distribution of weight enabling someone or something to remain upright and steady.

Coordination: The ability of a person to skillfully perform movements allowing desired outcome.

 

Power: Physical strength or force exerted or capable of being exerted. Force = Mass x Acceleration

 

Reaction time: the time elapsing between the beginning of the application of a stimulus and the beginning of an organism’s reaction to it

Speed: can be defined as the distance traveled divided by the total time taken.

It is a lifetime adventure that one must be truly inspired about and totally motivated for maximum benefit.