One of the greatest benefits of training and studying martial arts is that you will constantly learn and improve.  It doesnt matter if you study or practice boxing, Gracie Jiu Jitsu, Judo or Muay Thai all of those arts will constantly challenge you and force you to learn new things.  When you study martial arts you will learn new things about the history of the martial art that you are studying, you will new moves and new techniques and most importantly you will learn more about yourself, your coaches and your training partners.

Learning about the martial art that you are studying is definitely cool.  All of the martial arts have very interesting stories related to them about how they were developed, how they became popular, and all of the great stories around the legends of the arts.  You will also learn about all of the techniques, how to do them and again how the were developed over time.  Learning about the moves and the history of your sport or martial art will definitely help you understand and appreciate the art more and more but it is not going to be the most beneficial thing you will learn while training.

The most beneficial learning will be what you learn about yourself, your coaches and your training partners.  This might be a bit hard to believe when you first start training.  When most people start training their focus is on the art, the background, the moves and all of the people who have trained in the art.  But after you start to understand the art and after you have learned a bit about the history of the art you will realize that you are also learning a great deal about yourself and people you train with.

Learning about yourself while training is truly one of the greatest things.  If you are true and honest with yourself you will learn a great deal about yourself by testing yourself in very difficult and interesting situations.  Martial arts will put you in situations where you will be tired, you will be exhausted, where you will be forced to give it everything you got and how you deal with these situations will tell you alot about yourself.  You will see that you start to get better at handling ANY difficult situation.  Regardless if it is at the academy, at work, at school or on the street.  Training and constantly testing yourself will teach you how to handle difficult situations in the best way possible.  This again is one of the best benefits of studying and training martial arts.

Besides learning how you deal with pressure and fatigue during difficult situations you will learn how to focus more, how to dedicate yourself to something, how to help others through difficult situations and how to coach yourself through touch times.  You will also learn compassion and kindness.  You will learn more about yourself then you thought you would when you first started martial arts.

Here are some links that will teach you a bit about the history of some of the martial arts we teach at Scranton MMA: