What are the sports benefits you can get in practicing arnis?

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Answer:

What is Arnis?

Arnis is known as the national martial arts here in the Philippines. In Spanish era, it is called eskrima.  It is a weapon-based fighting using sticks as wooden swords. Arnis includes hand-to-hand combat, joint locks, grappling and weapon disarming techniques.

It is also known as one of the best martial arts for defense. Many students joined this kind of exercise in their schools. Some of them are chosen to compete at other schools and be one of their school's representatives.

Benefits of Arnis

• It can be used as self-defense. It can help you to ensure your safety especially if you are a girl.
• You can use your stick as a weapon. If someone wants to harm you, you can protect yourself from using your wooden sword.
• Arnis teaches us discipline and control.
• It provides a full body workout. It helps you to improve your stamina, muscle tone, flexibility, balance and strength.
• It gives you a healthy lifestyle. It helps you to improve your physical fitness, mental and emotional  health.
• It gives you positive encouragement and respect for values in martial arts.
• It helps you to improve your cardiovascular health because it stresses the heart if you do the arnis.
• It helps you to be focused on your goals.
• It helps you to have a good mood because you are participating in exercise.

Two types of Arnis

1. WEKAF (World Eskrima Kali Arnis Federation) - it is the most common system used internationally which was established in 1989.
2. Arnis Philippines (ARPI) system - it is the most prominently used during the 2005 Southeast Asian Games. It was established in 1986.

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Using escrima sticks, blades, and hand-to-hand combat, Eskrima is a Filipino Martial Art that’s highly respected for its speed and practicality as a self-defence system. Thus, there are great benefits of Filipino martial arts.

In this post, we’re going to discuss the benefits of learning Eskrima. And at the end of this post, we offer a special training to develop your hand speed for self-defence.

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So keep reading…

The Benefits of Filipino Martial Arts – Eskrima

1. Burns Calories and Keeps You in Good Shape

Eskrima is one of the best ways to lose or burn calories without your realizing it. It has a conducive exercise program that develops and enhances various fitness components, primarily the aerobic which improves your cardio. Eskrimadors are aware of the demand on cardio when performing Sinawali and Redonda nonstop for several minutes.

Experts state that it’d take two hours of exercise to burn approximately 1,000 calories. In order to relate calorie burning to weight loss, the simple equation is this – 3,600 calories is equal to a pound of fat. Therefore, burning such amount of calories indicates removing one pound of body fat.

A regular Arnis martial arts class can last about two hours, and its intensity may differ according to the power required in every session. There is indeed no doubt that Arnis Escrima is an excellent exercise, and the only determining factor in succeeding is whether the student can stand by the training until he or she begins losing weight.

Double stick drills, is an aerobically challenging training because of the weight of the two kali sticks and the degree of coordination required to execute the intricate movements. It promotes muscle tonality of the arms, legs, and body parts involved in the exercise.

Sparring in Filipino Arnis with heavy armour that lasts two to three minutes requires muscular and aerobic endurance. Shadow fighting using single or double weapons for two to three minutes also develops cardiovascular endurance.

Escrima exercises also stimulate joint mobility especially the four primary joints of the body – elbows, shoulders, knees, and hips. Joint mobility is the answer to getting other fitness attributes like flexibility, agility, and balance.

2. Learn Practical Self-Defense

Each culture throughout history has established some type of self-defence martial art so that they can protect their people in times of crisis. However, the only actual test of martial arts is actual combat. As a combat art, Eskrima has proven it practicality and potency through the many years of warfare and death matches among its practitioners.

As a weapon-based martial art, one advantage of kali escrima is that it allows you to defend with a weapon and it also enables you to defend against a weapon-wielding opponent. Because you are familiar with the different bladed and non-bladed weapons used by the attacker, it becomes easier for you to anticipate and reverse his attacks.

With the rising number of violence and brutality on the streets these days, as well as the increase of theft and crime involving weapons, this method of Martial Arts turns out to be even more prominent in the society today.

Eskrima schools drill practitioners for hours in a variety of combative and weapons situations involving knives, machetes, clubs, broken bottles, chains, long sticks, and other weapons – including the bare hands. These empty hand techniques of tapping, parrying and countering bare hands strikes are called tapi-tapi or mano-mano.

Esrkima prepares you to defend yourself from attackers by giving you the reflexes and muscle memory to react quickly against compromising situations. What you learn from training can easily be applicable to real life.

3. Develop more Confidence

Knowing that you can defend yourself against an attacker or even multiple attackers, gives you the confidence to deal with unforeseen attacks. The fear comes from not knowing what to do during an attack, especially one that is fatal. So martial arts also gives you the courage to face any challenge.

Training in Filipino Martial Arts, you’ll inevitably go through sparring sessions or even competitions. The pressure ones go through during competition or sparring is immense. But with training comes self-confidence and such confidence will build up once you go through sparring or competition.

Win or lose you’ve walked through the path towards building confidence – conquering your fears and working through pressure. And the more you train and challenge yourself, the more confident you will feel.

4. Inherit Mental Discipline and Focus

When you train in Eskrima, you are constantly put to the test. As frustrating as it may seem, we are forced to push ourselves when we are at our weakest. To excel in Eskrima, the practitioner must ensure that the drills and exercises are given the required effort and time.

80% of Eskrima competition – of attacking or defending against an opponent – is mental. Thus, training in Filipino martial arts schools involves conquering your fears against an opponent, staying calm in a stressful situation, and the repetition and development of technique.

Eskrima entails that the practitioner to have an analytical mind in both sparring and solo practice. This can be seen when the practitioner looks for an opening and weakness in his or her opponent during a fight or when he or she is looking for ways or mixing the various attack angles.

5. Promotes Improvement

With each training, day come new challenges. This compels us to step up to our game and improve ourselves. This enables us to turn bad habits into good ones and brings us closer towards our goals.

In the martial arts of Eskrima, improvement can be fast because of the proactive approach to learning. You learn by applying the technique. Courses are compartmentalized into different levels and each student has to master the techniques in the lower levels before they can learn techniques in the higher levels.

Many of the Filipino Martial Arts schools adopt the belting system wherein a student acquires a coloured belt after gaining proficiency at a certain level and passing an evaluation. This system promotes improvement as the students strive to master every level through consistent training.

6. Forge the Warrior Spirit within You

Each time we spar or test our skills with a partner or opponent, we grow a little bit stronger and become more confident. This forges the warrior spirit within us to accept whatever challenges that may come our way.

Filipino Martial Arts training can push your body to its limits. This ability to endure hardship and beat the odds forces the indomitable warrior spirit within you. Sparring sessions and competitions help you to conquer your self-doubt and engage with a sparring partner or competitor.

Thus, you do not shy away from challenges and battles but welcome it as an opportunity to prove yourself. You are forging the warrior spirit every time you prepare for anything that may come in your way together with the determination to face it when it comes.

7. Relieves Stress

Martial arts like Eskrima is one of the best ways to relieve stress and there’s nothing like the clash of arnis sticks and a series of drills to release those endorphins.

Eskrima training promotes consistency in training such that the practitioner has to forget about his troubles and worries and focus on the training. Schools like the APO-Balintawak Self-Defense System and the Darwa Pangalima Eskrima, among others, perform meditation and breathing exercises to help prepare the student mentally for training.

Filipino stick fighting is a mental game as much as It is a physical game. It requires patience to learn and master all the different techniques of the art. Developing such patience helps relieves whatever stress you may feel at the moment.

8. Build Strong Bonds

Aside from the master-student relationship, you will be surrounded by fellow martial artists with the same passion and interest in every training session, a sense of brotherhood and comradery follows. In Filipino Martial Arts training, practitioners drill with different partners to expose themselves to different personalities.

Training with different partners enables you to learn more about other people’s styles, biases, and attitudes. Thus, a deep sensitivity and bond develop among practitioners who withstood training together. There’s nothing like bonding with people who are motivated by the same things you are.

Final Words

As you can see, there are many benefits to learning Eskrima. Are you ready to immerse yourself in Eskrima training? If you are, you can begin by learning the ultimate Eskrima drill to develop hand speed for self-defence – Click Here.

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