How Karate Fits into Modern Day Training.

Especially for Children. Part 1

By Danny Corr

So called modern day fitness fads never cease to amaze me, almost every year there is another easy-fix solution to fitness and weight loss how so many people believe there is an easy way to get fit. We of course in karate all know there is no easy way, no easy fix, as we all have spent lifetimes pursuing the mastery of controlling our bodies and our minds.

In this article we will take a quick look at how “modern” Karate was developed by the old karate masters like Funakoshi, Itosu and Azato to become a mainstream activity suitable for school children and how this can be used today to fit in with today’s School curriculum of health and fitness and the new research into the Long Term Athlete Development Programme (LTAD).

To demonstrate the effectiveness of Karate as a tool to help develop health and fitness in school children we can summarise Funakoshi’s writings as far back as the 1920’s.

Extoiling the virtues of karate Funakoshi believed that the very nature of karate requires the body to move in various directions, Kata (forms) is a great example of how children can learn directional co-ordination without putting them or their bodies under any stress. The movements set out in Kata ensure that there is equal development to both sides of the body, unlike sports like football or tennis, which emphasise overdevelopment of the right foot or the right arm for example!

Karate katas do not require any level of fitness at the start in fact a basic kata takes no longer than one or two minutes to perform, it is only as the individual becomes efficient in the movements that they start to perform them with more vigour thus building up the cardio-vascular health and the strength and stamina throughout the body.

Funakoshi wrote in 1926 “ Usually exercise suitable for men is not suitable for women, and that suitable for women is not suitable for men: that for people recovering from illness is not enough for healthy people, and similarly, sufficient exercise for healthy young people is too strenuous for older people or young children. Karate however may even be practiced by the physically weak, by women, children and elderly. In other words, since individuals may adjust the exercise to their own capacity there is no danger of overexertion or physical exhaustion. Moreover as the body is built up the techniques become more skilful, the movements naturally become more powerful, so that the amount of exercise becomes sufficient even for the healthy young man in his prime”   

Another extremely beneficial aspect of Karate training in these days of Fitness Club fees and memberships, karate can be practiced alone, in pairs, in groups with little space or without the need of any specialised equipment. For Children in particular, they become more socially active in set-karate classes and often become engrossed in learning something exciting and practical that they don’t realise how their bodies are adapting health wise and how they are becoming co-ordinated.  

These are merely a couple or realistic benefits of our Art/Sport, we will tackle the Self-defence benefits and Psychological benefits in the next article.