Want a Beach-Ready Body? Try Fight-Ready Fitness!
Spring has sprung and Summer’s not far behind!
That means it’s time to shake off Winter’s lethargic grip and start building a beach-ready body.
Of course, being martial artists, we at the SMA Centre don’t abide by pure aesthetics – as our packed schedule of fitness and martial arts classes can attest to.
You only get one body, so you might as well treat it as well as you can and get as much out of it as possible.
When it comes to converging form and function, there aren’t many training regimens that compare to core fitness training.
But what is your core and how does it affect your day-to-day life?
What is “The Core”?
When people think of working their core, they tend to think about ripped 6-packs that’ll leave all the girls (and boys) drooling by the poolside.
While this might be one benefit of a strong, fit core, it is far from the only or even the most important one.
The truth is that your core essentially comprises the entirety of your body, aside from your arms, legs and head. In fact, most of the musculature that makes up your core lies behind and beneath the area that people most often try to focus on – the abs.
Your core acts to stabilise and enable almost every physical action you’ll ever take.
So, Why Train For Core Fitness?
For martial artists, this means that the core is integral to generating force in your strikes, fluidity in your movement and balance in your attempts to outmanoeuvre your opponent.
For everyone else, it means that your core is what keeps you upright, balanced and stable.
Every activity you take part in – from moving furniture, to changing gears when driving your car – engages your core muscles to various degrees.
Now, obviously you can drive your car easily enough with a soft and squishy core. But if you want to impress your friends by deadlifting a fridge up a flight of stairs, you’re going to need to focus on a core fitness regimen that engages your foundational muscles in ways that simply doing a set of crunches every morning just can’t.
How Can You Build a Strong Core?
Blood.
Sweat.
Tears.
Well, maybe not blood. But a strong core takes hard work to build and even harder work to maintain.
While a core fitness regimen will likely include a diverse array of exercises and equipment, such as squats, deadlifts, sit-ups, kettlebells, medicine balls and more, at SMA we believe that there is more to core fitness than the endless drudgery of torturous routine.
We also believe that strict routines, while sometimes necessary, do not adequately reflect the challenges that you and your body might face out in the real world – if your fitness level in the gym is not replicable in the world, what’s the point?
Being martial artists, steeped in the traditions and philosophies of the Chinese martial arts, we believe that the mind and the body should be in harmony, and that an effective workout stimulates both.
This is why our core fitness classes are versatile, adaptive sessions, and no two classes will ever be the same.
If you want to know more about core fitness and its benefits, why not get in touch and book yourself into one of our classes?