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Best Workout..Period

As science continues to advance at an exceedingly rapid pace. It has become more and more obvious that physical health and particularly a strong fitness regimen, is one of the most beneficial daily habits (along with sleep, good nutrition, socialization and mental health). 

Proven to increase happiness, productivity and longevity, the Center for Disease Control describes the benefits of exercise as this:

"Regular physical activity is one of the most important things you can do for your health. Being physically active can improve your brain health, help manage weight, reduce the risk of disease, strengthen bones and muscles, and improve your ability to do everyday activities."

However, with the myriad types or workouts, from pure cardio to solely resistance training and everything in between. As well as the ever changing variety of fitness trends from soul cycle to hot yoga to CrossFit. It becomes extremely difficult to choose which to participate in as all have strengths and weaknesses.

This chapter will show you every possible reason why martial arts are the best all around fitness regimen and why you should give them a try to add to your overall fitness journey.

Research points toward multiple domains of the physical benefits of martial arts practice

including effects on balance, muscular and skeletal systems, cardiovascular effects, and overall cognitive functioning (Rios et al., 2018)

Cardio, or Aerobic exercise is physical exercise of low to high intensity that depends primarily on the aerobic energy-generating process. "Aerobic" is defined as "relating to, involving, or requiring oxygen", and refers to the use of oxygen to meet energy demands during exercise via aerobic metabolism adequately. Wikipedia, is is one of the two main elements that people assume when they think of fitness or workout regimens. Cardio can be anything from jogging, swimming, riding a bike, to high intensity interval training (HIIT). 

Basically any exercise that increases your heart rate and breathing rate above normal Levels for extended periods of time. Martial arts in particular, those that compete in a ring or cage such as boxing, Muay Thai or mixed martial arts (MMA). Include an extremely high level of cardio. While a round of competition may only last for two minutes at the minimum and there may only be three rounds for a total of six minutes. Any fighter will tell you that is an extremely long time to be in the ring and it pushes your endurance levels like no other sport. Because it combines not only the cardio needed for long distance endurance, ensuring you can push yourself at 100% capacity for the entire fight (Aerobic cardio). But also the cardio needed for short spurts of explosive power, how hard and fast you throw a strike combination and how many times you can. Anaerobic cardio, the body's ability to work without oxygen for less than 2 minutes generally. Think of a time you've had to sprint really hard for a short burst and immediately afterwards you are huffing as hard as you can and just trying to catch your breath. It also adds to the cardio difficulty due to the fact that the body has to be reactive and proactive, explosive and move in multiple different planes, forward, backward, side to side. Also you're under the intense fight or flight pressure that will escalate adrenaline, and muscle firing and intensity, burning more oxygen. (Rios et al., 2018). 

A study in which 30 participants engaged in three high – intensity kickboxing classes per week for a duration of five weeks evinced improvements in cardiovascular functioning (Ouergui et al., 2014). 

The researchers found overall improvements in multiple domains of functioning, with the domain of cardiorespiratory fitness being most prevalent. 

However, (Ouergui et al. (2014) note that the improvements in cardiovascular fitness may be more closely linked to the intensity and frequency of training. As kickboxing is an external exercise that is conducted through high intensity training, these results may not directly correlate to improvements in cardiovascular functioning across other martial arts disciplines, though research has shed some insights toward positive results, and we will discuss this more in later chapters.

A study by Yoshitaka Yoshimura and Hiroyuki Imamura (2010) examined the effect of 30 minutes of basic karate exercises for a duration of ten weeks on college aged women with no previous karate experience and identified their lifestyle as sedentary had on maximal oxygen intake. Yoshimura and Imamura (2010) found that participants in basic karate exercises evinced 40 – 50% increases in maximal oxygen intake (VO2 Max) as compared to the control group. This data further suggests that martial arts practice can contribute to a healthier lifestyle.

To sum it up nicely: The relationship between VO2 max and all-cause mortality is quite good,” says Dr. Michael Joyner, an anesthesiologist and fitness expert at the Mayo Clinic. “The odds of dying in the next 10 years are markedly low if your VO2 max is high.”

Hence the better your cardio and the more intense it is the better your overall health and longevity

Martial arts incorporate resistance training, also known as weight training or strength training, this involves the performance of physical exercises that are designed to improve strength and endurance. It is often associated with the lifting of weights.

Think of anything where lifting or strength would be involved from Olympic lifting to cross fit to the weight machines at the gym, all are used in various ways to increase muscle density and strength. While you wouldn't think that martial arts use what we assume is traditional strength training you would be surprised. In order to generate power for the strikes martial artists need to throw, strength training is an important part of a fighters training regimen. For instance repeatedly striking a heavy bag, think of your standard punching bag but body height and weighing up to 150 to 200 pounds, over and over not only builds endurance, and cardio but also strength and explosive power. Regular practitioners have evinced increases in muscular strength and bone mineral density (Rios et al., 2018). More specific to the muscular system, hard martial arts styles have been observed to increase muscle mass and improve overall body composition (Douris et al., 2004). As Douris et al. (2004) found, regular, middle – aged, practitioners of Soo Bahk do, a type of martial art that combines the external aspects of Karate and Tae Kwan Do and the internal style of Tai Chi, showed an increased ability to preserve muscle composition accompanied by decreases in adipose tissue, think of it as every time you strike the bag or an opponent you are building strength similar to every rep of weight you lift at the gym 

These results point to significant health implications, as decreases in muscle composition and increases in adipose tissue have been linked to health complications such as hyperlipidemia, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease (Douris et al., 2004), which again are the four biggest killers in the world today reiterating a strong resistance training program is crucial to longevity and a healthy lifestyle.

Another thing that separates martial arts from many fitness regimens is the Mental training aspect. Martial arts require your brain and body to be both reactive and proactive in response to stimuli. Not only do martial arts push your boundaries in both the cardio and resistance training as we just previously described. But it also pushes your brain to coordinate with your body, crucially setting it apart from other fitness regimens.

Working to use the mental side of training, forcing you to not only exert your body but also your mind, requires your neurons to be reactive and proactive in the same space. The brain burns twenty percent of the energy your body intakes, thus the more you use it while training your body the more overall energy and calories you will burn in any workout.

Think of a normal resistance workout or cardio workout where you are lifting a heavy weight or running long distance, while these are amazing for your body you really don't have much for your mind to do while at work. How many times have you been on a run and let your mind wander to other things? I know I do quite often and it is an excellent time to work through particularly difficult situations in our everyday lives, as you can let your mind drift and get a dopamine hit which puts you in a better mood to work through a particular problem. 

However, in martial arts you are both working extremely physically hard and also reacting to another person. Forcing your brain and your body to adapt to the situation, work in multiple planes of movement and at different tempos, distances and speed. Think of the difference between shooting hoops by yourself and playing one on one versus an opponent, it is generally much more difficult both physically and mentally to play against another person. 

Now imagine that person you're playing one on one versus is trying to punch you as hard as they can, your focus gets a lot more serious.

As Rios et al.’s (2018) meta-analysis found, martial arts practice has been linked to improved reaction times, cognitive processing speed, executive functioning, faster responses to peripheral visual stimuli, and delays in visual acuity decline. 

One study identified cognitive functioning as the highest order of functioning as it is involved in selective attention, judgement, anticipation, planning and conflict resolution (Douris et al., 2015), all of which play a role in effective interaction with the external world that individuals are tasked with moving through. 

Within the study, the researchers hypothesized that middle-aged practitioners of martial arts might see an increase in overall cognitive functioning as a result of engaging in martial arts practice that encompasses complex movements. 

(Douris et al. (2015) elaborated on this hypothesis by commenting on the mind –body nature of martial arts movements; movements that require more concentration, focus, imagery, and mindfulness as compared to the more repetitive and less mindful movements of 

anaerobic exercises like running and walking. 

Their findings suggested that participants who engaged in martial arts classes exhibited improvements of executive functioning, most likely because higher cortical process were activated as participants engaged in coordinating the complex movements of martial arts as compared to the more repetitive motions of walking. 

This evidence points to the potential impact that marital arts practice can bring to improving an individual’s overall ability to interact effectively with their environment. 

Further, in the aforementioned study, participants engaged in a martial art known as Su Bahk do; 

increases in other aspects of cognitive functioning have also been evinced in varying martial arts styles. 

For instance, one study measured levels of dynamic visual acuity among older practitioners of Judo as compared to non-martial arts practitioners. The researchers noted the importance of dynamic visual acuity to both athletes and non-athletes and defined it as the measure of ability to discriminate critical details of an object when there is relative motion between the observer and the object (Muiños & Ballesteros, 2015). 

Their findings suggested that older adults who have regularly practiced Judo exhibited better dynamic visual acuity than nonathletes of the same age, which further supports their hypothesis that a more physically active lifestyle is an important factor in counteracting age-related perceptual decline (Muiños & Ballesteros, 2015). 

The connection between cognitive capacity, psychological health and well-being are fairly well understood. As martial arts practice is linked to an array of physical health benefits, inferences can also be made with regard to psychological health; an inference that is well supported by current literature.

All of this clearly sets it apart from a standard workout at the gym.

The physical effects of martial arts practice vary based on the school of practice that is involved but can generally be understood through the difference between the external and internal styles. External styles are generally thought of as more beneficial for younger practitioners, as the movements focus on coordinated  movements of punching and kicking found in Taekwondo, Karate, and Kung Fu, rather than the slow, controlled movements the internal styles like Tai Chi and Ba Qua that have been shown to be of more benefit to older practitioners, or those practitioners who engage in martial arts as a means for physical healing. Relative to the domain of balance, hard martial styles, like Muay Thai, have been shown to lead to an increased ability such as the ability to find balance, which is a complex function that ingrates the processing of mechanical, sensory, and motor stimuli (Leong et al., 2011); a location of the body in time and space is integral to effective martial arts practice and is therefore highly stressed in training environments. The emphasis placed on improving balance begins on day one of training, as studies have found that by learning even the most basic movements of martial arts techniques improves the somatosensory system (Cromwell et al., 2007; Leong et al., 2011). 

Improvement in balance within martial arts practitioners was found to be greater than that of participants of physical sports such as walking, football, and dancing (Rios et al., 2018). 

This suggests that martial arts training requires an increased need for focus and discipline even more so than traditional western sporting activities, which subsequently provides basic insight into the mindset that martial arts practice cultivates. The development of balance is supported through slow and deliberate movements in the learning phase and increases in sophistication and speed as increased familiarity with movements result in more fluid -like transfers of energy across musculoskeletal regions of the body. 

This is extremely important particularly for older adults as uncontrolled falls can be deadly. One study found that women over sixty five that fall and break a pelvic bone have a 30% chance of death within six months! 

Whereas the goal of western sports often takes an external tone, as participants seek to decrease times, increase the number of touchdowns or goals scored, or increase the number of repetitions or weight that can be lifted, martial arts practice includes slow and deliberate movements as well as explosive and powerful movements, with the goal of the exercise being to learn how to move the body in a precise and controlled manner. The nature of the movements matters more than the speed or number of repetitions; the body is the instrument of the mind. In a marital setting, in which self -defense is of utmost importance, those who move in a controlled, and balanced manner often see more effective results than those who enter martial situations with reckless abandon.

High intensity and varied cardio, continual resistance training and explosiveness, and mental training that improve a variety of mental facilities, improving everything from hand eye coordination, to balance to reaction times. 

I will add a personal note to all of this data. I have always been an athlete. From growing up in Iowa wrestling and playing soccer as early as five years old. Eventually transitioning and finding my passion for football and basketball in high school, only because the very rural community I grew up in did not have any form of martial arts to participate in. I accepted a scholarship to play Division one football in college and once I decided to give up my football career to focus on academics I played collegiate rugby and continued to play recreationally as a young adult. All of this to say I completed in many sports and have always done the physical training that accompanies them, lifting and cardio included, and none of these came close to the intensity and physical and mental exertion I've had to channel in martial arts. I can easily say at thirty seven years old I am in far better physical and mental shape than I ever was throughout my younger life and it's Muay Thai and martial arts that I have to thank for that.

All of these reasons are the evidence behind why Olympic Boxing, judo and wrestling are time and time again studied and ranked as the most difficult sports in all the Olympics, and why martial arts should be included in your fitness regimen.

And just for a last little helpful nudge an average hour of Muay Thai or Boxing burns anywhere from 800-1000 calories, try getting those results on a treadmill or lifting weights.

Mental Health Benefits

We've all been there. Exhausted from work, boss yelling at you all day, bills and errands stacking up and you never quite feel like you're getting ahead! 

It seems like in this day and age, stress is just considered par for the course for most of us ( 52% of Americans say they are stressed beyond where they feel like they could cope or deal with life and in 2022 alone 84% of Americans said they were dealing with weekly stress up from 74% in 2021 (Ipsos 8-5-22). 

We are continually doing our bodies an absolute disservice and shortening our lives by incredible amounts by holding this much stress on a daily basis. Studies have found many health problems related to stress. Stress seems to worsen or increase the risk of conditions like obesity, heart disease, Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, depression, gastrointestinal problems, and asthma. 

Stress can even affect our DNA. Telomeres are tiny structures that protect chromosomes from fraying – kind of like the little plastic aglets at the end of your shoestrings. These telomeres shorten as we age, but if they become too short, the host cell can become impaired, this is why your hair grays and your face wrinkles over time. Scientists have found that stress and adversity significantly shorten telomeres, prematurely aging our cells and making us more prone to illness. Basically killing us earlier on a cellular level.

It's no wonder that every person in the world understands the dangers and tries to eliminate stress in their lives. While continually looking for outlets to manage stress and decompress. From alcohol and drugs, to social activities and hobbies, to just zoning out in front of the TV or playing video games. All of these short term and generally unhealthy dopamine hits, instead of doing one of the most beneficial and proven methods of reducing mental stress, physical exercise!

The correlation between physical exercise and mental health has proven time and time again to be extremely strong; mental health is very often supported by a regimen of physical exercise. Therefore not just physical health is aided by regular exercise. 

The Mayo Clinic states that Almost any form of exercise or movement can increase your fitness level while decreasing your stress. The most important thing is to pick an activity that you enjoy. Examples include walking, stair climbing, jogging, dancing, bicycling, yoga, tai chi, gardening, weightlifting and swimming. 

Therefore, there is no excuse not to at least do some version of physical exercise as it not only benefits you physically but mentally as well!

Regular exercise has also been linked to positive outcomes for the treatment of depression, and both Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease, in which exercise improves the symptoms of the diseases and the overall quality of life for individuals experiencing symptomatology associated with all three (Deslandes et al., 2009). 

The researchers use the neurophysiological hypothesis to explain the link between improvements in treatment as supplemented by exercise. The neurophysiological hypothesis purports that exercise increases the synthesis of several neurotrophic factors that are related to cognitive functioning, neurogenesis, and plasticity (Deslandes et al., 2009). All of not only help improve mental health and ability but also help to stave off the mental symptoms of aging.

Whereas exercise has been shown to improve the mental health of non-exercisers, the inverse is also true. An analysis of the literature by (Weinstein et al. (2017) found that regular exercisers who were unable to exercise for an 

extended period of time experienced consistent negative changes in mood symptoms and general well-being. 

This leans into the idea that once you develop a fitness regime your body and your mind crave it as they both know consciously and subconsciously that it is what's needed! I always say to my students the body knows what you need and once you start listening to it and treating it well it is much harder to convert back to unhealthy habits. Anyone can tell you once you've started eating healthy when you eat a really unhealthy meal your body will tell you and the same goes for exercise. Once you start training regularly you'll not only feel guilty if you don't exercise, you'll start to notice you're much more irritable and more sluggish overall. 

Regular exercisers who were unable to exercise for a sustained period reported increases in feelings of guilt, irritability, anger, confusion, restlessness, tension, frustration, stress, and loss of vigor (Weinstein et al., 2017). 

These findings were more severe for longer periods of exercise withdrawal, with two weeks of withdrawal showing statistically significant decreases in mental health (Weinstein et al., 2017). The findings presented by the above studies point toward the notion that we, as humans, experience psychological health and well-being from regular and sustained physical activity.

An American Psychological Association study states that Fifty-three percent of adults say they feel good about themselves after exercising, 35 percent say it puts them in a good mood and 30 percent say they feel less stressed.

So the prove is in the pudding, exercise reliefs stress…period. But again what if I'm still stressed and I work out? Or what exercise is the best for my stress? These are great questions and I'm here to tell you that there are exercise regimes that can relieve your stress and give you one of the most physically beneficial workouts.

What if I was to tell you there is a fitness regimen that is not only proven to be one of the best for you physically (burning anywhere from 800-1000 calories in an hour) but also allows you to hit a bag or even a person on a regular basis? This is martial arts!

Martial arts allow you to strike and defend strikes from others, using hands, feet, knees and elbows, and even some grappling or wrestling with your opponent. You get to use any strike you would like, take out all the aggression that has been built throughout the day and in doing so bring down all the stress you've accumulated. 

Let's be honest, how many of us have wanted to punch or kick something when we were overwhelmed at work or with things going on in life, I know I have. 

Well surprise there's a fitness routine that allows you to do both, exercise intensely and to hit something while doing it!

Also an additional benefit of striking and particularly being struck back, i.e. sparring. Is that due to the reactive and proactive nature of the sport and the combination of the fight or flight psychology. The body is forced into a flow state (a mental state in which a person is completely focused on a single task or activity). They are directing all of their attention toward the task, and they do not experience many thoughts about themselves or their performance. Some people refer to this informally as being “in the Zone.” 

For this reason when I began training Muay Thai and before I understood meditation, mindfulness, and being present. I always called my Muay Thai training my "Meditation through Movement". Because it was the first time in my life where I felt completely and utterly present. Because quite frankly you have to be.

More and more the scientific and medical community are seeing the benefits of meditation and mindfulness on both your mental health and also your physical health, The Mayo Clinic states that meditation reduces the areas of anxiety, chronic pain, depression, heart disease and high blood pressure. "The heart rate drops, your respiratory rate drops. There is decreased oxygen consumption, decreased carbon dioxide expired. The body is healing itself and starting repair."

Over the last five years I have personally developed my mediation and mindfulness practice and seen the extremely positive benefits in my personal life, but even before beginning my mindfulness practice I realized when I first stumbled into training Muay Thai, it was the only time in my life that I was truly and completely present. I like to tell potential students “You can't be thinking about your bills when someone is trying to punch you in the face” and it was such a joy to shut out all the extra noise in my life and just be in the moment. 

Especially because at the time I was working in politics in Washington DC and my working life can only be described as a constant state of extreme stress. My first job out of college was working on Capital Hill for a United States Senator, attempting to pass The Affordable Care Act out of his committee and to say it was a contentious bill, for those that don't remember, would be an understatement. As the front desk person for the Senator, my job from eight AM to six PM was answering six phone lines of constituents screaming at me and saying some of the most heinous things people could legally say. I wasn't  able to argue back or even respond in any way, in fear of saying the wrong thing and being fired. Just listen to the rant and hostility, thank them politely and tell them you'd pass the message along.

That on top of my other duties working my first job in one of the most powerful and difficult places in the world, had me stressed in a way my young self had never been tested. I had had many difficult and hostile jobs growing up, from roofer or bailing hay in the middle of one hundred degrees summers to waiter and line cook, but nothing had prepared me for this. I needed to find an outlet or potentially lose my mind and destroy my young career before it ever really began.

Finding an exercise that not only allowed me to exert my body to extremes and to focus my mind to just the task in front of me. Always left me feeling so focused after each training session, no matter how tired I was or how bad a day I was having before I walked into the gym. I walked out with a weight lifted off my shoulders and it made it that much easier to manage the next day of constant stress.

It took awhile but I began to slowly see how it helped my focus in other areas of my life from business to personal to educational. And with that knowledge I was much more open to the potential benefits of a personal meditation or mindfulness practice, without the physical aspect. My meditation through movement eventually lead to just meditation and now both are without a doubt two of the best practices of my life!

Now that I've combined both I've truly been amazed at how little stresses me out. Sure there are times, as there always will be, but these situations have to be more and more extreme and therefore rarer for them to really bother me, as it truly should be in life. 

We live in a constant state of stress and high cortisol levels, (cortisol is a hormone that regulates stress in the body). One might ask why this is the case and what about our current lifestyles is more stressful than say our caveman ancestors? 

Because the body that we have evolved over the course of generations to be stressed about the extreme dangers of survival (starving or being eaten by lions.) Now has little to fear in this age of relative safety and abundance, therefore our body doesn't know how to channel all the cortisol, more about this in later chapters.

So your boss yelling at you, or having to give a speech in front of a large group of people, are now what we associate with fighting a lion or any other life or death situation our ancestors had to deal with on a daily basis, which isn't healthy individually or as a society.

By putting your body in a controlled act of fight or flight, sparring and training on a daily basis, you remind the body of what is truly dangerous. Which in turn balances out our cortisol levels. So you are better prepared mentally to face the challenges of everyday life in our current society. 

I jokingly tell my students once you get in the ring and fight someone, afterwards it's very difficult to get stressed because your boss is screaming at you, let's be real at least he isn't trying to punch you in the face or murder you.

Not to mention  if he was punching you in the face through martial arts you'd know how to handle it.

Real Self Defense

You're walking down the street on your way home from work one evening or from a bar on a Friday night and someone approaches you with bad intentions either to mug you, or simply start a fight because maybe they had a little too much to drink.

You freeze and realize there's no avoiding the situation and no way to quickly escape, what do you do?

You think back to every snippet or random suggestion you've received from your parents, your peers or from random self-defense discussions you've heard over the years. Do you poke them in the eye, do you knee them in the groin, do you try to stab them with your keys?

While all of these things could potentially work in a self-defense situation the unfortunate reality is there are no Magic Bullets. 

No one technique will guarantee you get out of the situation safely, and any self defense instructor worth their value will tell you that, except of course the best technique to not be there in the first place or run away if you can!

However, the repetitive stress testing involved in many martial arts, (drilling your body and mind to react, defend and attack in different dangerous but controlled settings) gives clear and proven benefits for any self-defense situation. 

Drilling your body, through repetition, to become comfortable with uncomfortable situations, such as being punched in the face or choked until you tap out.  Over time allows your body to keep cortisol and adrenaline levels in a much more manageable range. Adrenaline is a hormone secreted by the adrenal glands, especially in conditions of stress, increasing rates of blood circulation, breathing, and carbohydrate metabolism and preparing muscles for exertion. Cortisol is the primary stress hormone, increasing sugar, also called glucose, in the bloodstream, enhancing the brain's use of glucose and increasing the availability of substances in the body that repair tissues. Cortisol also slows functions that would be unessential or harmful in a Fight or Flight situation, such as digestion. 

Fun fact if you're ever nervous, try chewing gum, as it will trick your body into thinking you're eating and you can't be eating and fighting so it will lower your cortisol and your body will relax a bit.

The difficulty comes in managing both of these fight or flight hormones. Doing so will give you a much better ability to respond to threats and in a much more productive manner than any one technique or set of techniques.

Though most of us have heard of the Fight or Flight physical response to outside threats or dangers. Most of us have no idea what actually happens both physically and psychologically while you're in the state. The Fight or Flight response is an automatic physiological reaction to an event that is perceived as stressful or frightening. The perception of a threat activates the sympathetic nervous system and triggers an acute stress response that prepares the body to fight or flee. This response enhances certain systems in your body to best be able to manage the threat, either to fight it or flee from it, such as narrowing your vision, slowing down your processing of time, enhancing your muscle reaction speeds, enhancing your pain tolerance and so many more.

Hence, while there might not be a magic bullet or one technique to keep you safe, understanding how your body moves and how to capitalize on the Fight or Flight physiological reaction and how to use it as a weapon is your best bet to survive.

I can not reiterate enough that that doesn't mean you won't be scared or that what you do will work. It only means it will allow you to be in the best position to make the best decisions and react in the best way to keep yourself safe.

Now that you understand a little of the benefit of martial arts training for self defense and decided to start training, the difficult question becomes; which one should you choose to best equip you for self defense?

There's a broad spectrum of self-defense classes and curriculums out there and they all have different techniques and outlooks. I am asked all the time what is the best for protecting oneself; is it Krav Magraw, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Muay Thai, Boxing, Wrestling etc? 

For starters none is perfect and all have the pros and cons, strengths and weaknesses. Again there are no magic bullets that will help you with all of it, so learning as many as you can and taking what's useful from each is advisable if possible but I'm also aware there is only so much time in each day.

The sad but honest truth is that human beings have gotten really good at beating and killing each other over our entire evolution and the human body only moves in certain ways, hence there are some recurring techniques and ideas across the ages, cultures and martial arts that have a tendency to be the most effective. We will get to what I believe are the best later.

As I've continually mentioned and will again and again, there are no magic bullets in self defense but in its simplest terms I believe, through my extensive training and research. The three most basic keys to self-defense are: Awareness, Reaction, and Viciousness.

Awareness is by far the most beneficial skill a person can use in a self-defense situation.

By being aware of your surroundings; what's going on, who's there, where the exits are etc. You are better able to extradite yourself from a bad situation before it even begins, which is the only technique that works perfectly, not being in the situation at all or being able to escape it before it begins to get physical or dangerous.

Paying attention to dangerous situations that are evolving around you makes you a less attractive target also.

At the end of the day human beings are just animals, though we don't like to think so. Assailants like predators in the wild will go after the easiest victims. The young, the weak, the small and those not paying attention to their surroundings or developing situations; i.e, being on your phone or other electronic device, daydreaming or just not being aware of your environment. These are the human equivalents of a sick or baby wildebeest to a lion. 

Just being aware of your surroundings not only gives you the ability to exit any situation before most others understand what's even happening. You also make yourself a much more risky target by showing the predator you see them and are aware of their intentions. 

Secondly and more importantly, it gives your hormones and body added time to prepare for the dangerous situation. This allows it to maintain a healthier level of cortisol and allows for the adrenaline to stay in a more controlled range, better able to take advantage of all the benefits of Fight or Flight, such as your muscles firing at a maximum level allowing you almost superhuman, at least for you, levels of strength and speed needed to “fight your lion”.

Reaction, is the second most important. This relates to the moment you're aware of a situation arising that could be potentially dangerous to you and what your first instincts will be. Do you have the skills and the training to quickly and effectively react, hopefully providing the best possible outcome for whatever the situation should necessitate. In the moment your body will go on autopilot because your brain will be too slow to process everything that is happening in the split seconds a situation like this takes.

This could mean something as simple as leaving the situation before it begins, or running away as soon as it happens. These are ALWAYS the best choices and any self defense class that doesn't teach you that first and foremost should be avoided! Martial Artists and animals both know that even in the best outcome a physical altercation has the risk of serious injury. Just look at the faces of some winning boxers after a fight, you rarely come away completely untouched and particularly when your life's on the line you want to ensure you minimize your risks as much as possible, by not being in the situation to begin with you do just that.

However, if you must use the Fight, in Fight or Flight, this is where your martial arts training will come into play and your ability to be comfortable in uncomfortable situations, through continued stress testing (i.e. sparring, drilling, and competitions) in martial arts. This allows your mind and body to react to the situation in the most optimal manner thus providing you with the necessary tools to keep your composure and put yourself in the best possible position to avoid injury or death. 

Interestingly, a lesser known fact of the Fight or Flight reactions in humans is that most people assume there are only two reactions when in reality there are four ways animals and humans react in Flight or Flight mode. 

Posturing is another, think a guy puffing out his chest, trying to look bigger, challenging another person and talking smack, it's a way to intimate the other person without risking injury. You can observe this in animals in the wild, think of a gorilla beating it's chest to a challenger. Both are the same and a good strategy if it helps you avoid the fight and the risk of injury, however it can potentially escalate the situation also.

The other, and worst reaction, is Freezing. When your body gets so scared and the adrenaline rushes so high that you lose control of your bodily functions and just freeze. We've all felt that experience once in our life, being so scared that you can't move, you can barely breathe. It's a terrifying place to be especially when your life is actually on the line and the place you never want to be in if you're fighting for your life. Thus repetitively training your body, particularly by getting hit, putting yourself in those uncomfortable but controlled situations. Is what will allow your body when a dangerous moment forces you to react, to not let your adrenaline go so high that it paralyzes your ability to react, or Freezes you.

Finally, the third most important part of self-defense is the determination of who will be more Vicious. 

Again we are similar to animals, though we hate to admit it, and it is the animal that is willing to inflict more damage and can inflict more damage in the survival situation that will usually prevail. 

If you have been drilling in a stress tested martial art or self-defense curriculum, where you are being repeatedly attacked and learning how to defend yourself as well as learning the best possible tools, kicks punches, elbows, knees, etc, to inflict the most damage you will already be at a substantial advantage in any self-defense situation.

Think of any boring activity you do on autopilot, brushing your teeth, tying your shoes, walking, even driving. You don't have to think about doing any of these and even in something like driving you aren't constantly paying active attention only reacting to difficult situations because you've done them so many times your body reflexively does them. 

Self defense ideally should be the same, though it will obviously be more scary and difficult, think hectic traffic or bad weather conditions to continue the driving analogy. When you are attacked you want your body to go into autopilot for the majority of the self defense, calculating your distance from your attacker, setting your feet right, breathing, blocking any strikes and using your own weapons effectively. All while allowing your more cerebral conscious part of the brain to be adapting and reacting in real time. Though in reality what I've observed in my experience is the conscious part of your brain will most likely be panicking and coming to terms with the situation.

The most common misunderstanding of martial arts for self-defense I always hear is "That wouldn't work in the street because there are rules in martial arts and ring sports". To which I say yes, that is correct. There are rules in martial arts to protect each fighter, for the exact reason these techniques are dangerous. But that also doesn't take into account that the reality is the underlying goal of any ring sport is to inflict as much damage as possible to your opponent in order to get them to submit. Boxing has rules but you're still trying to knock the other person out. 

So the person who has years of training in a sport where the intention is to inflict as much physical damage as possible will definitely have a clear advantage to someone who has no training or only limited training in the street. Especially, when there are no rules to protect their opponent and the martial artist can use all of the tools they've learned as well as the additional dangerous strikes they are told not to for safety in the ring, (i.e. eye pokes, fish hooks, groin shots etc) It only makes the martial artist even more dangerous.

Years of training getting hit and being in uncomfortable and dangerous situations, or what the body feels to be dangerous also allows your body to better adapt to the adrenaline spikes and other physical processes your body goes through when it's in Fight or Flight mode, as discussed previously. The more trained you are, the more likely you're able to manage your cortisol and adrenaline levels. This will better allow the martial artist to react in the most positive way to keep themselves safe.

So now that we know the benefits of martial arts in self defense, if you were to take one martial art for self defense what would it be? As previously mentioned, all have pros and cons, strengths and weaknesses. But I believe it is Muay Thai,  while slightly biased, that has the edge for the reasons I will express below.

One, Muay Thai has scientifically and through competition proven the best martial art for producing powerful strikes regardless of the size of the fighter, studies show that Nak Muays, Muay Thai Boxers, generate the most pound for pound power of any martial art, generating equal power to much heavier practitioners in karate or taekwondo (Kavagan & Sayers, 2017). 

This is obviously important for self defense because you will not know the size of the person attacking you and generally those of smaller stature are the most likely to be attacked. As mentioned deep down we are animals and just like lions attacking the young and the sick, human predators tend to attack those they perceive to be the easiest to successfully target. Do you think the one hundred and twenty pound, fifty year old  woman or the twenty eight year old, two hundred and fifteen pound male is more likely to be mugged? 

To give you an example of the power created in Muay Thai, tests have shown that the impact of a Muay Thai knee strike is like being hit by a thirty five mile per hour car! This coupled with elbow strikes, and the clinch, a version of standing Greco-Roman Wrestling with knee and elbow strikes allowed. The combination of these specific tools I believe put you in the best position to protect yourself from the most obvious self defense attacks; strikes, chokes and takedowns, while also providing the most dangerous tools to use against your opponent. 

Muay Thai also doesn't advance it's partitioners through a belt system similar to BJJ, Karate or Taekwondo. Skill is only determined by your fight record, and even then there are many fights where a fighter with a much smaller record prevails over a much more experienced fighter. 

This is important for self defense training because the implied lesson is two fold: it teaches outward humility in that you don't have to prove your ability, that is between you and your Kru, Thai for teacher, and you and your opponent. Not to mention it never hurts to not let people know what you know in self defense so that you're not a target because of your experience or lack there of.

It also teaches you humility to never assume you know what an opponent is capable of, forcing the fighter to begin every interaction, in the ring and outside it, with a healthy respect and curiosity of anyone they meet. 

This constant humility and curiosity is the main reason you don't see many professional fighters out starting street fights, they know the serious risks of injury any fight can produce and they know they can never assume the ability of anyone they meet on the street.

To summarize training martial arts on a regular basis is the best possible way to prepare yourself for any self defense situation because it trains the mind and the body to be comfortable in uncomfortable situations and through continued drilling and stress testing, maximizes your ability to be aware of your environment and react as quickly and viciously as possible to ensure you are in the best possible position to prevail.

And Muay Thai is the best martial art to train as it uses the most powerful strikes, elbows and knees coupled with standing grappling and take down defense to provide one system with the most effective tools needed for any self defense situation.