The most important self protection tip

New Year’s Resolution – Get Fit. (Self Defence 101)

Here we go again. It’s time for people to start their annual fitness regime with all the best intentions in the world.

You can just hear it can’t you……”Well it’s a new Year and I’m going to get fit and lose weight.”

So what will it be this year? Gyms, Bootcamps, Personal Trainers, Swimming, Jogging, Dancing or Martial Arts? The Government are doing a good job of telling us that a sedentary life style will kill you. So maybe you’ve decided to listen, at last.

Oh and lets not forget after the excesses of Christmas it’s time to lose some weight as well. If you go out and pick up any of the women’s health or men’s fitness magazines at this time of the year. You’ll find the typical headlines “Loose 7lb in a week,” “Lose weight fast” and the list goes on and on. It must be an important topic, Government Ministers are getting into the act now and suggesting to the magazines what they should be saying

Anyway enough about all that fitness mullarky and losing weight. Let’s get back into the Martial Arts and give you the biggest most important Self Defence tips of all time.

Are you ready to slay your demons? Well let’s start then at Self Defence 101.

1. Eat moderately and sensibly
2. Exercise
3. Don’t eat more calories than you expend during the day

Surprised, Yes? Well Martial Arts is about self defence and self protection and practiced well is meant to be holistic as well. (Your know holistic derived from the Greek word holos, meaning that the bodies natural systems should be considered a whole entity rather than a collection of separate parts – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holism)

Eat Moderately and Sensibly

Do you know that as a rule of thumb, the guidelines indicate that following intake of calories is necessary to maintain a healthy body weight. A man needs around 2,500 calories a day a woman needs around 2,000 calories a day.

Any idea what you actually consume? There are plenty of Android and Apple phone applications that will help you to keep track of what you are eating.

Bottle of Cola and bar of Chocolate for breakfast? At 139 calories for a tin or 210 calories for a 500ml bottle and a bar of Chocolate being up to 255 calories, you really won’t do yourself any favours, if you carry on like that all day.

The NHS offer some good tips for healthy eating. If you really want to scare yourself, look at the calorie lables on the foods you buy, yes even the so called ‘low fat’ options

Exercise

Do you know what the NHS’s guidelines are for adults aged 19-64?

To stay healthy, adults aged 19-64 should try to be active daily and should do:

• At least 150 minutes (2 hours and 30 minutes) of moderate-intensity aerobic activity such as cycling or fast walking every week, and muscle-strengthening activities on 2 or more days a week that work all major muscle groups (legs, hips, back, abdomen, chest, shoulders and arms).

OR

• 75 minutes (1 hour and 15 minutes) of vigorous-intensity aerobic activity such as running or a game of singles tennis every week, and muscle-strengthening activities on 2 or more days a
  week that work all major muscle groups (legs, hips, back, abdomen, chest, shoulders and arms).

OR

• An equivalent mix of moderate- and vigorous-intensity aerobic activity every week (for example 2 30-minute runs plus 30 minutes of fast walking), and muscle-strengthening activities on 2 or more days a week that work all major muscle groups (legs, hips, back, abdomen, chest, shoulders and arms).

Don’t eat more calories than you expend in exercise

The ‘magic numbers’ seem to be that to lose 1lb of fat, you need to burn 3500 calories. The recommended guideline is to aim to lose 2lb of fat per week, so you need to make sure that you are burning another 7000 calories in a week. You could eat 500 less calories a day and that will lose you 1lb. You can also add more exercise. What does that equate to, have a look at the table to the left and work out how the figures impact you.

We often use a calories counting watch, one of our members holds the current record with 1046 calories burned off during one 1 hour class. That kind of consistent result will see some good things happen, but it’s down to you to make it happen.
So the first and golden rule of Self Defence has to be to look after your health.

The second golden rule is to learn a Martial Art 😉 Details of our classes are here