There are a thousand and one skills I'd willing love to master if given the opportunity to; ranging from hands on skills like pottery and sculpting to technical skills like expert programming, cybersecurity and even artificial intelligence(AI) and machine learning(ML) but there's one particular skill I would gladly opt to master and I wrote a post a few days ago, stating one of the reasons why. Stay with me now.
There are a number of reasons why I would choose to master skillmartial arts. Self defence is one of such reasons but in this case, not the major reason. True, it's good to have some stunts up one’s sleeves in case of emergency but my first reason for mastering this skill would be the sheer love and admiration I have for it. In secondary school, I had this teacher who was a home management teacher by day and a karate tutor after working hours. I remember watching his mentees make loud, sharp shouts (that I've come to realise is called Kiai) while they performed various stunts and I was always stunned.
After watching these mentees for months, I finally summoned up the courage to approach my home management teacher concerning the karate lessons and I was outrightly turned down because the class was for kids between the ages of 5 to 10 years and I was a vibrant teeneger at the time. Of course I was hurt because what did this man mean I was too old to learn karate? I took his response in good faith and somehow, I’ve still anaged to retain the admiration.
Although it may seem like a really weird skill to master, I'd like to share the top three benefits I believe martial arts has to offer;
First, discipline and focus. From the little knowledge I gathered from my observation as a teeneger, martial arts requires discipline, concentration and focus amongst other qualities. Without these qualities, one cannot thrive as a martial artist. A good martial art teacher instils these qualities in their students and the amazing part of it all is that these basic qualities instilled in martial artists in training are qualities that I hold very dear. Take discipline for instance, we can all agree that discipline is an essential attribute we need to progress in life. Show me a hardworking and successful person and I'll show you a disciplined individual.
Second , improved physical fitness. I do not know about you but whenever I think of physical fitness, I think of enhanced cardiovascular health, flexibility, resilience, perseverance, balance and agility–all of which can be gotten from martial arts.
Next, it can serve as a source of stress relief and relaxation. Recently, there was a trend tagged girl therapy and it basically centers around target shooting. Merely watching others aim and shoot using just their upper body seems really therapeutic, one can only imagine the relaxation that follows if the whole body is involved. After a very long and frustrating day, martials arts can be an amazing way to blow off steam. I've seen a couple of action movies and I believe that there are a number of ways to blow off steam but martial art is one of the most effective ways.
Mastering martial arts could be synonymous to killing a good number of birds with just one stone. Because as they say, health should be our priority and without good health, one cannot really function or even put other skills to good use. Hence, to me, mastering the skill of martial arts would always be the best bet.
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