Reducing stress and anxiety is often a sub-goal of martial arts students who are looking to get fit, have fun, and learn life-saving skills. But this sport can help students with how to reduce anxiety directly in a few different ways. Let’s get into them. We’re not medical professionals and recommend you consult with a doctor to get the proper treatment and care you deserve!
How to Reduce Anxiety with Martial Arts
Adult Jiu-Jitsu classes can be a huge help for adults learning how to reduce anxiety. Not only is it a highly physical sport, which means you’re doing something with all the adrenaline that the anxiety produces, but it’s also a unique tool we can use to combat symptoms of anxiety.
One symptom of anxiety is racing thoughts. If you’re battling anxiety, you may feel like you’re living totally in your mind, not feeling present or even feeling sensations in your body. Martial arts can be an amazing solution for this. First of all, when you’re feeling anxious, your brain can pump out adrenaline and activate what’s known as your fight-or-flight response. All that adrenaline usually just stays in your body because you’re not moving, you’re overthinking. However, martial arts pushes you in a different direction. Kicking, punching, and channeling that energy effectively is healthy and can even be necessary for your body, as it’s getting the adrenaline and anxiety out in a focused way.
Secondly, using your full body in a self-defense workout, in general, is going to melt that stress away and help you get all of those feelings out. Work stress, kids stress, relationship stress, life stress. All the things you’re way overthinking come out on the mat. You channel it all into movement and it makes you a focused, clear-headed person off the mat and an excellent martial artist on the mat, with real power and energy behind your moves.
Concentration and Motivation through Martial Arts
It’s no surprise that racing thoughts can lead to difficulty concentrating, another symptom of anxiety. Often when you’re struggling with how to reduce anxiety, you’re in a weird dichotomy. Sometimes you’re sharply alert and almost hyperactive, and other times you’re fatigued and don’t want to do anything. You’re either frozen in panic or spinning your wheels with stress. If you’re experiencing this, show up to class. That’s all we ask you to do.
The only time we can help you beyond the words of a blog post is when you’re standing right in front of us, ready for class. We will show you how to push yourself beyond what you think you’re capable of, and you’ll feel your focus shift.
If you can commit to making it through the door, soon the minutes will fly by as you’re having fun with your friends and getting your sweat on, and then you’ll wonder where that hour went. For this one martial arts class, you don’t have to be anything other than exactly you, even if you’re anxious, doing what you’re doing, exporting your thought process to your instructor, and getting it all out through physical movement.
Martial arts cannot cure or get rid of anxiety. Only a medical professional can show you how to do that. But moving your body, joining a community engaging in positive social interactions, learning about mindset, and looking forward to new goals and challenges? These are vital components of your whole mental health picture that martial arts can help with.
Creating a Better Mindset through Martial Arts
This is something you’ll hear us say a lot, but it’s true. Martial arts is about so much more than just punches and kicks. Martial arts is an amazing tool that people have been using for centuries to achieve real success and change their lives.
How to reduce anxiety? Using ancient techniques that are mixed with a complete education on modern mindset in our martial arts classes, you build confidence as well as physical and mental strength. You develop discipline and perseverance by hitting your fitness goals and moving through the ranks.
And you learn so much about how to get your mind on your side from such a physically involved sport. We’re not going to sugarcoat it, martial arts is hard. It is a difficult sport. There’s a lot of coordination, a lot of muscle movement, a lot of focus, and discipline required to be a successful martial artist.
It’s not all peaches and roses in our class, but neither is life. Especially life with anxiety. We’re going to help you get through it. Whether it’s just anxious feelings or full-on generalized anxiety disorder, we know the difficulty of life with mental health issues cannot be understated. We also know it can be helped through the power of martial arts classes and the development of your mindset.
How to Reduce Anxiety with the Right Mindset
Mindset is so important to us here at American Top Team Ashburn because we’ve seen it work time and time again, on and off the mat. One of our favorite quotes is, “A black belt is a white belt who never gave up.” The only difference between the two belts, or any two belts, is the commitment to show up and keep at it, even when times are tough.
When you’re by yourself in a gym, for example, it’s you, the machinery or weights, and your brain telling you what to do. If you’ve ever been to the gym when you’re anxious, you’ll know that your brain is not your most reliable workout buddy.
It’s easily distracted, it can say some pretty mean things to you and hype you up for what it sees as emergencies in the worst way possible. But when you’re in our martial arts classes, it’s not your brain telling you what to do. It’s our instructors, who have been right there where you’re standing.
Many of them have struggled with their mental health issues, and have turned to the mat time and time again for support from their instructors, their peers, and this family here. How to reduce anxiety with Taekwondo? Martial arts is an individual sport in a group setting, which means that you’re never alone, and that fact alone can be hugely comforting and helpful in reducing anxiety.
We are going to show you just how much butt you can kick, despite your mental health struggles. What’s so cool is that as you keep coming to classes, you start to internalize that supportive encouragement, and can carry yourself through tough moments with compassion and understanding. The whole self-defense piece of it, then, becomes just the cherry on top.
Martial Arts and Mental Health
The benefits of martial arts for mental health are generally endless. How to reduce anxiety with Karate? For anxiety specifically, staying active, channeling racing thoughts into something useful through kicks and punches, and mindset/community support are martial arts benefits that are critical to staying well.
With martial arts classes, your overall mood and your health can both improve tremendously right alongside your mindset, which gives you the proper tools to reduce anxiety and push through those tough times. Ready to see what martial arts can do for you? Give American Top Team in Ashburn a try with our risk-free adult martial arts classes trial and see for yourself how it can change your life. You’ll love it!