Can Martial Arts Save Your Life?

It was a typical early Friday morning in Johannesburg. Bleary-eyed commuters sat in the
traffic uttering the obligatory “TGIF”, maybe occasionally treating themselves to a thought about the weekend yet to come.

Car doors locked and windows sealed, each person insulated from the drama ensuing one road away into the suburbs. Police and security forces were engaged in a cat and mouse chase.

A group of armed robbers were running and jumping walls doing their best to evade arrest.

Joining in on the chase, a colleague and I traveled some blocks into the suburb. We
positioned ourselves in a street where we thought the most likely trajectory of the suspects would be.

We soon realized we were in the wrong place, and I hitched a lift to a better spot on the back of a security pickup van.

As we approached a sharp bend in the road, shots rang out to our left. In his enthusiasm to get to the scene, the driver picked up speed. In a moment of dread, I realized that centrifugal force was not on my side and I was going to be thrown from the back of the vehicle.

I managed to lean back so that my feet could hit the edge of the pavement first and then executed a tried and trusted forward roll, a Mae Ukemi in Judo speak.

The backplate of my body armor absorbed much of the fall and I heaved myself up, noting that part of my elbow had been scraped off on a strip of concrete.

A dose of adrenaline sorted out the pain, and I continued on my mission with the vague recognition that later in the day, aches and pains would be payment.

Following the sounds of action, I ran into an upmarket residential complex, which had just been converted into a high-class version of the Alamo. Spotting a circle of policemen standing around a body in a yellow shirt, I approached the area only to watch life slip away from the young figure sprawled on the suburban grass.

Perhaps if his life circumstances were different, he would have met a better end.

The chase was over, a medic patched my elbow and signed documents confirming that this young suspect was never going home.

Are Martial Arts Really Effective?

It was not the first time that my early Judo training has kept me on my feet.

Being an active person, I have had a few sudden life-changing moments, surviving tree falls, rolling away from bicycle accidents, and attempting various childhood stunts that started with the words “I wonder if I could…’’?

I recall my first martial arts lesson.

The spongy feel of the mats beneath my feet and the introduction to the various falling techniques of Judo called Ukemi. There is no question that Judo has effectively saved me from occasional concussions and reduced the list of broken bones that already exists.

I was nine when I enrolled in that first Judo class. In later years I was to add Karate, Tae Kwon Do, Thai Boxing, Jeet Kune Do Concepts, MMA Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and combat shooting to my martial skills.

It seems funny to me that martial arts have contributed many times to the health and safety of my life, but it would take approximately 27 years before I used those skills in a violent confrontation against another human being.

So how then can martial arts save your life?

To answer this question, and make writing this article a little more challenging, I have avoided the bodies of anecdotal information on the internet and have reverted to academic papers as my source.

The Health Benefits of Martial Arts

Before we consider that you may need martial arts to defend yourself from a knife-wielding attacker who wants to relieve you of your cell phone, let’s do a little risk assessment of your life.

It’s far more likely that the cause of your death will be found in a tub of ice cream than in a backstreet alley (unless “Backstreet Alley” is a new flavor in the dessert section of your local supermarket).

According to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) hosted at the University of Washington, cardiovascular disease took 17,79 million people’s lives worldwide in 2017.

Second on the list was cancer 9,56 million deaths. Homicide only managed to make number 17 on the list with 405,346 deaths.

Homicide rates become a much more prevalent form of death for people aged 15 to 49 years, however cardiovascular disease, cancer, and HIV/AIDs still top the list.

It’s clear that one of the best forms of self-defense is to make sensible life choices and keep your heart in good working order.

Martial Arts Studies

In a paper titled ‘Martial Arts as Sport and Therapy’, Burke and his band of researchers refer to a ratio of risks and benefits during the endeavour of martial arts. On the benefit side there is a strong selection of evidence that martial arts can contribute to a long and healthy life. Here is a smattering of information on the topic:

Study 1

Saraiva et al., (2018), studied adolescents performing Judo and Muay Thai. Over a 16-week period they showed that martial arts training led to a decrease in systolic blood pressure in normotensive (people with normal blood pressure) adolescents. The conclusion was that the training could assist in the prevention of cardiovascular disease in young people.

Study 2

Douris et al. 2013 looked at arterial stiffness in a group of twenty middle age subjects (arterial stiffness is related to an increased risk of coronary disease). The study group included 10 practitioners of the Korean martial art Soo Bahk Do. The control group were described as sedentary people. The study showed that the martial arts group had less arterial stiffness than their control counterparts and that long term exposure to martial arts training like Soo Bahk Do could reduce the “age related effects on arterial stiffness” and therefore increase arterial health.

Study 3

Origua Rios et al. (2018) reviewed 28 studies that considered the health benefits of so-called “hard martial arts” in young, middle-aged, and older adults. In their review, the researchers were able to show that martial arts positively benefit people with their balance, postural control, cognitive functioning, and psychological health.

There is of course the dark side to the force.

Over the years I have seen martial artists perform a host of self-destructive activities including hundreds of knuckle push-ups and forward rolls on concrete floors (physiotherapists must love these people).

This noble quest to damage the body is often driven by unscientific training methods or even worse, performed in the name of tradition.

One of the biggest myths ever perpetuated in the martial arts is that feats of breaking solid objects are a sign of one’s ability to land devastating blows during interpersonal violence.

This is akin to smearing bitumen on your chest and dancing naked under an elm tree as a cure for pneumonia.

While breaking wooden boards or even worse bricks, might be a tool for passing through mental barriers, it is also a sure way for creating long term musculoskeletal injuries that will follow you to the last days of your life.

Before you non-traditional martial artists leave this screen with a slight smirk on your face, consider that you are not exempt from some of this body abuse.

Rainey (2009), reviewed 207 injuries in a study of 55 MMA practitioners. The head, neck, and face sustained the highest injury levels (38,2%). The researchers found that lower belt levels were ‘’significantly’’ more likely to sustain these injuries.

Clearly, a review of progressive training methods and the use of safety equipment needs consideration in some gyms.

The Mental Benefits of Martial Arts

Now that we’ve taken care of the body, what about protecting the software that runs the show?

In 2015, the World Health Organisation estimated that about 4,4% (322 million) of the world’s population suffers from depression and 3,6% (264 million) suffer from anxiety disorders.

That’s not to mention the millions suffering from PTSD as a result of war, sexual and interpersonal violence.

Then there is the staggering estimate that up to 10% of our children suffer from learning disabilities. With one person committing suicide every 40 seconds worldwide (WHO | Suicide data 2019), clearly, there are a lot of stressed and unhappy people.

If we are going to be talking about saving your life, we need to find ways to enhance the quality of that life.