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5 Reasons Why We Need to Have More Girls Training Combat Arts

Combat arts are not only reserved for the men, just like how the military and space programs aren’t male-only areas. Actually, women have already proven that they are more than capable of achieving incredible results in martial arts.

Take the last Olympic games in Rio for example. Women showed extensive skill of Taekwondo, where China’s Zheng Shuyin was awarded the gold medal in her matchup with Mexico’s Maria Espinoza in the +67kg bracket; and Kimia Alizadeh, Iran’s first female medallist, taking the bronze in the -57kg division.

Let’s explore the top five reasons why we need to have more girls training combat arts.

1. We Need to Face the Facts and Reality

Sadly, violence against women is a fixture of the daily news.  Some hard facts include:

• 1 in 3 Australian women has experienced physical violence, since the age of 15
• 1 in 5 Australian women has experienced sexual violence, whilst 1 in 4 has experienced physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner
• It is three times more likely that for a woman to experience violence from an intimate partner than a stranger
• Eight out of ten women aged between 18-24 were assaulted or harassed on the street in 2014.

In short, the threat is real. This is learning self-defence is critical. Training any martial art in the Integrated Combat Centre will put you in a position to learn the necessary skills to protect yourself and your loved ones should you find yourself in danger. You will also have the kind of confidence and awareness that deter most attackers looking for an easy prey.

2. Women Pay More Attention to Effective Techniques

When you start training a combat sport, sooner or later, you are going to have to spar with a partner who is significantly bigger than you. These encounters can really put you in a tough spot and force you to learn and master the most efficient techniques.

Since we are not only focusing on strength and endurance during our training sessions, you will be able to learn how to utilise optimal leverage, your opponent’s momentum and explosive movements to compensate for the disparity in size and strength. Explosive movements that utilise the entire body paired with immaculate technique provides the best results when used in self-defence.

Furthermore, our self-defence instructors always welcome women to our classes, as it makes the teaching more challenging and fun for us. This is simply because gender diversity helps bring up real-world issues in the class, and learning how to take down a larger opponent on the mat provides a unique opportunity for martial arts teachers to find the most efficient ways to apply different techniques.

3. It’s Good for the Community

Let’s not fool ourselves. Who wouldn’t love to see more strong, confident and combat trained women in our neighbourhood? There are dozens of benefits of being engaged in combat arts training and confidence is just one of those. Confident women are examples to other women and young girls.  And positiveness they exude is contagious. Positive energy is attractive to others and confident people project it wherever they go.

Feeling strong and self-confident provides so many benefits, one of them is increased performance in all fields. Women who train combat arts are able to easily overcome obstacles in their daily lives by learning from their mistakes and finding the best “angle of attack” for each situation.

4. Combat Arts Help You Develop Good Habits and a Positive Body Image

It’s no secret that combat arts teach you how to use your body as both a weapon and shield and in order to achieve this, one has to learn to recognize which option is best for which situation.  This will become second nature when you train on a regular basis, you will learn how to do so, and you’ll begin to respect your body in the same fashion outside the gym.

What do I mean by this? Well, in most situations we treat our bodies as disposable tools, seemingly unaware of the consequences.

Take an unhealthy diet or irregular sleep as an example. They take their toll on our bodies slowly over the years and lower our quality of life. On the other hand, someone who treats their body as a warrior treats their weapon – cleaning, honing and keeping it in perfect shape – will see all kinds of benefits in other areas of life. After you learn to respect your body during training you will also start living a healthier lifestyle.

There are too many women out there struggling with body image issues who fear the “tough guy” atmosphere of the typical gym. However, when there are a number of strong and powerful ladies in your class to keep you motivated, it’s much easier to give it your best and work on your fitness.

We all need to stay physically active in this “age of chairs and smart devices”, and training combat arts can provide more than enough awareness and physical activity the average woman needs.

5. Wage War on Stereotypes

Stereotypes are a sort of a standard, a conventional image. It is “a widely held, but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing”. When you Google “stereotype” the first example that comes up is “the stereotype of the woman as the carer”. And yes, a woman can be the carer, but she can also be so many other things.

I’m not trying to hit that feministic string in you by telling you this, but I’ve personally never been fond of stereotypes, the most annoying one being that combat arts are not for women. Yet, we have seen so many women over the decades who made careers by training combat arts and participating in competitions.

As a combat sports instructor, I have to admit that there is no major difference when it comes to training men and women. Ultimately, the results depend on how dedicated, willing to learn and determined a person is.

Book your free trial now at the ICC and check it out.

Related Tag: Sydney Martial Arts

Give our BJJ program a go and experience the improvements to all of these fields. It is considered to be an excellent first style where the skills are easily transferable.

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