Which martial art is best for older adults? Wing Chun Kung Fu is one of the best martial arts for older adults. Many martial artists find Wing Chun later in life because they have less flexibility for high kicks, and are less interested in high impact sparring. Wing Chun is a style designed for close quarters combat and uses hand sensitivity drills and a close quarter drill known as chi sau.
Two practitioners link arms in a rolling drill. Each attempts to land a strike on the other or unbalance them without compromising their own defence/balance. This gives rise to a “game” of combat. It can enable anyone to become very efficient in their movements and adept at self defence fairly quickly.
Which Martial Art Is Best For Older Adults – Low Kicks
While there are kicking techniques in Wing Chun, kicking isn’t performed any higher than the waist level. So, if you are looking for a low impact martial art which can be done much later in life, Wing Chun fits the bill well here. Other styles such as Taekwondo require much more flexibility with such a focus on high kicks.
Wing Chun doesn’t do high impact sparring like some styles. Chi sau (sticky hands) practice focuses more on technical skill development and relaxation, rather than hard hitting and cardiovascular sparring.
While Wing Chun may not be the highest impact martial art in terms of cardiovascular exercise, it makes up for this in skill development. Certain styles focus on high intensity warm ups using press ups and sit ups for example. Whereas our classes only have a light warm up and we focus mostly on skill development.
So if you’re looking for cardiovascular exercise, our classes might not be for you.
Which Martial Art Is Best For Older Adults – Relaxation & Health
Wing Chun uses forms (see siu lim tao) to help connect the mind and body, learn positions and encourage relaxation. With relaxation, there’s a number of advantages (in combat) besides the obvious health benefits in general life:
- When your muscles are relaxed they are more receptive to incoming forces
- You can move more efficiently when relaxed
- Power generation is greater when you learn to properly relax the mind and body
- You move faster when relaxed than when you are tense
- You can react more appropriately when your body and mind are both relaxed
While Wing Chun is an effective martial art there’s many health benefits of training Wing Chun. As you become more accustomed to the practice of your daily forms, you’ll want to remain in a more calm and focused state. This can help in a number of ways throughout your life during day to day activities, as well as in practice.
Summary
Wing Chun is definitely one of the best martial arts for older adults and our classes typically attract the over 40’s, often coming from other arts which are more hard, physical or require a greater level of flexibility and fitness than Wing Chun. We are open to over 16’s but tend to find older adults are more interested in our classes.
Wing Chun is definitely a thoughtful art, and the practice goes hand in hand with centreline theory, which you will learn in the beginners course. To join a class, fill out the form here and respond to the automated email which you’ll receive through email.
Wing Chun is a great martial art to practice whatever your age. It uses only low kicks so you don’t have to be very flexible. Most of our practice revolves around hand sensitivity drills, forms and chi sau, with some testing of structure and “free flow” (street orientated self defence techniques).
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