Protect Your Heart with Martial Arts
Valentine’s Day has passed, but February is still about the heart. The American Heart Association celebrates Heart Month to raise awareness about heart health and heart disease.
What you may not know is martial arts is great for the heart. The cardiac benefits of martial arts give a whole new meaning to cardiovascular fitness.
For example, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu involves intense rolling sessions with your training partner, incorporating resistance, and strength training. This high-intensity interval training helps to increase your heart rate and can improve your cardiovascular endurance over time.
With that in mind, here are some ways that martial arts classes can protect and strengthen your heart.
Martial Arts Raise the Heart Rate
The first way martial arts can help the heart is by raising your heart rate when you work out. The heart is a muscle that needs a workout. During a BJJ class, you’ll always start the workout with a warmup. Running in a circle along the mat, bear crawling, and shrimping down the mat as well as jumping jacks might be included. This is another way you raise your heart rate.
The benefit of raising the heart rate is that it oxygenates the blood and helps promote calorie burning even after working out. People of all ages need to keep their hearts pumping, and martial arts is a great way to do this.
Martial Arts Lower Blood Pressure
Did you know high-intensity martial arts can help lower your blood pressure? It’s true. Hypertension is a leading contributor to heart disease.
When you work out, your heart becomes stronger. That means it can pump blood more efficiently than it can without exercise. The less effort your heart has to expend on pumping blood, the lower your blood pressure is.
Martial Arts Lower Cholesterol
LDL cholesterol – the so-called “bad” cholesterol” – is also a factor in heart disease. Regular participation in martial arts helps weight loss, which decreases the amount of LDL cholesterol in your blood.
There’s evidence that working out also shrinks the proteins that carry cholesterol through the bloodstream, making them less dangerous to the heart.
On a related note, regular vigorous exercise – such as the kind you get in a martial arts workout – helps to increase HDL or “good” cholesterol.
Martial Arts Reduce Stress
One thing that separates martial arts from many other forms of exercise is that it requires mental stillness combined with physical exertion.
Mental stillness contributes to mindfulness. A practice can significantly decrease stress and anxiety in children and adults.
Considering that there is a direct link between stress and heart health (stress contributes to high blood pressure and related issues), During BJJ training, your mind is fully engrossed in jiu-jitsu, constantly thinking about ways to counter your opponent’s moves. As a result, you can temporarily escape the stresses of the outside world and fully immerse yourself in the sport. Your focus stays on the mat. The fact that participating in martial arts can reduce stress is a benefit for the heart.
In addition to the benefits mentioned, martial arts training improves discipline, builds muscle coordination, and increases self-confidence.
This month boost your heart health by adding martial arts to your workout routine.
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