Getting Fit With Martial Arts

Learn how karate and other martial arts can refresh your exercise routine and challenge your mind and body.

Martial arts can help you defend and protect yourself, but there are a number of health and fitness benefits associated with them as well.

8 Ways to Focus on Getting Fit

You know you should exercise more, but that won't always get you going. Here's how to devise and stick to an exercise program.

    Forty percent of all chronic diseases can be prevented through a healthy lifestyle, which includes eating a healthy diet and working out regularly. Yet Americans have become increasingly obese and sedentary. “People just aren’t making the connection between unhealthy lifestyle choices and disease risk,” says Alice Burron, MS, spokeswoman for the American Council on Exercise and author of Four Weeks to Fabulous. Doctors often try to change people’s attitudes by emphasizing the health benefits of exercise. But a recent study at the University of Missouri, published in the American Journal of Public Health, found that telling people why exercising is good for them doesn’t motivate them. People don’t “think” themselves into being more active and working out, the researchers concluded after studying data on close to 100,000 participants.