Economics of Martial Arts

I consider martial arts very gratifying physically and mentally, I will keep practicing martial arts all through my life, I can feel the urge to remain mentally calm and confident.

Martial arts is a great hobby, you can create fight situations in your mind, try to win them in your mind and keep oneself prepared for a real fight situation, I strongly believe nothing beats preparation; keeping oneself prepared for other than routine chores of life is heart warming and relaxing but lately I realized that Martial arts is more than a hobby for me, I leave your opinion to you but before I joined “Kick Boxing” in Shootfighters, I had a thought process of a normal person on why I should join Martial arts, I am going to share that with you right now.

I have been working out heavily between mid of 2008 till the fag end of 2009, although I have been working out well even before that, this is the time period when I took it seriously because I was recovering from a knee surgery and I had put on a tonne of weight and was weighing a whopping 92 kgs , I managed to do well in the gym and reduced my weight to 78 kgs, I did not have a problem with weight reduction at all, I was strict, regimented and I used to give my best shot at everything, so I won there but there was a huge psychological gap between me and gyms, the funny part was that I could sense the same feeling in everyone that were coming to the gyms; they were,

• I had to keep re-investing a certain sum of money year over year to enjoy the facilities of the gym and to keep fit, this is one reason which turns off people from going to the gym regularly, simply put they are pissed off by the enormously huge fees and very little return for money, unless and until someone as strong willed as me who can make Gyms sweat for the money I paid, I don’t see any return of investment there.
• You have to go to the GYM to keep fit, you can’t do much with the terrace in your home or your beautiful local park.
• Lack of synergy in the gym, there are no group exercises, people work out alone all the time.  It is well known that people burn more calories in group work outs than others.
• If you travel frequently, you are doomed, you can’t take your gym everywhere you travel, taking a small gym kit with you is definitely pain in the a*** for many.
• One doesn’t build a social circle or like minded people.
• Gyms do not train micro muscle groups, more on this in a later post.
• Even if points 2 and 3 are satisfied in Aerobics or Salsa, they aren’t as good as martial arts for the following reasons,

1. They don’t let you understand your body, you may stop your workouts for something as little as a cramp.
2. They don’t cultivate the fighting spirit in you, if there is an absence of cultivation of fighting spirit in any workout, I would say that workout only as good as a calorie burner which does not contribute to any mental development.
3. They may contribute to overall physical health as far as mental health, I wouldn’t bet on them.

Simply put, I say nothing beats martial arts in enjoying yourself.

I believe in incentives for doing anything i.e where the ECONOMICS comes in, I worked out the incentives of joining martial arts, so just compare them,

• One doesn’t have to re-invest a penny after some initial training.
• If one is good enough, he may become a trainer and be paid for his workouts (i.e minting money for eating mangoes)
• You get a great set of like minded people to workout with, workouts are less painful, I could easily do 100 crunches in less than 5 minutes when I did it in Shootfighters, believe me there was no pain.
• There is room for constant self-development throughout the course of one’s life.
• You can take your work outs wherever you go, you don’t have to take a gym kit with you all the time,
• Martial arts trains both your macro and micro muscle groups, more on this topic in a later post.
• You understand your body much better than before; (I have to say something here, doctors aren’t health professionals, they are disease professionals, they study diseases and cure but not health and maintenance, tell me why else you would see fat doctors and nowadays doctors themselves have a tonne of diseases), I strongly believe diseases mental or physical don’t let you enjoy your life to the fullest, so you take a choice, you want to go behind doctors or pursue good health (I mean not just physical).

But my opinion on martial arts is much more in depth now, I just gave you a piece of my mind before I joined it.  As far as my current state of mind, it is left to another post.

One last word, the prime reason I even focused on martial arts in the first place is that; on the course of history our generation has become docile, cocooned in self-interest and little worlds, destruction of the fighting spirit and the never say die attitude, I say this to be some of the evil effects of capitalism , I wanted to reclaim the fighting spirit which was my birthright.  The very feeling of connecting with something that is so natural and spontaneous is giving me a tonne of confidence, joy and peace, this love of my own nature is letting me fight happily , I wish you be there to feel and enjoy it…

HAPPY FIGHTING,

With Love,

Sathish