Would Practicing Martial Arts be Beneficial to People with Autism?

(Originally posted for The Voice of Heard on February 28, 2012)

Throughout my life, martial arts have fascinated me. As a child, I watched a TV show called Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. While I attended my brother’s little league hockey games, I hung around arcade machines, fixated on games including Mortal Kombat, Killer Instinct, Darkstalkers, and Street Fighter. At some point during my early teens, I started playing the video game Tekken 3 for the original PlayStation. Starting in my late teenage years, I’ve been watching martial arts action movies featuring stars like Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Jet Li. Around the same time, I collected a few books on martial arts, focusing mainly on the pictures than the text; I have yet to actually read them. At one point, I attended a karate class 8 years ago not only as a form of exercise for getting strong but as a way I can fight back when I needed to defend myself. However, I felt I wasn’t really learning anything in the group lessons and repetition of the same instructions. After two months, I dropped out of the karate class and moved on with my life. In my spare time during the course of 8 years, I played fighting games like Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Tekken, King of Fighters, Soul Caliber, and Virtua Fighter alongside other video games; my evenings are dominated by watching movies including Chinese action dramas like Iron Monkey, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero, and Ip Man; Thai movies like Chocolate, featuring an autistic woman who absorbs fighting skills by watching movies, and the Ong-Bak series, featuring Muay Thai practitioner Tony Jaa; a Japanese movie titled Ichi, which featured a blind swordswoman; and (just last night) Only the Strong, which tells the story about a US soldier trained in Capoeira, a Brazilian martial art, who returns to his hometown and goes up against a Jamaican crime lord who also practices Capoeira. At one point, I wrote a brief entry about autism, martial arts, and my personal fascination with martial arts in the old version of my blog three years ago.

I’m writing this because for some reason (probably a part of my autism) I cannot focus on tasks I intend to do, which in this case is writing. Despite having a storm of ideas in my head, I just cannot resume to writing a short story which I worked on four weeks ago. I couldn’t focus hard enough; I couldn’t discipline myself to even focus. Earlier tonight, I met with a sensei I knew at the dojo I had mentioned. We discussed the possibility of my return to karate class in order to gain and develop the focus and self-discipline I’ve been lacking. This brings up a question I would most likely find an answer to once I re-enrolled in the dojo: would practicing martial arts be beneficial to people with autism? The sensei I had met asked if there were any studies done on this issue. So far, I have found a few articles mentioning such studies, which are very few and far between. One article mentioned a study done at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, which claimed to have found improvements in autistic children upon practicing martial arts. Despite a limited number of studies, it appears that some people are promoting martial arts as a way of improving autistic children when other therapies have failed, such as those in the American Tae Kwon Do Association. But I’m an adult and I’m not sure this is a thing for all autistic people of all ages. But I feel I have to at least try in order to find out if I can gain the focus and self-discipline through training; I have to know if my self-improvement in a dojo would be worth the time and money. Perhaps in due time, I could contact a few researchers I know to suggest that studies be conducted on the correlation between martial arts training and improvements in autistic people. I would have to provide updates on this subject as I obtain more information and train in the dojo.

Original Comments

Hassan
May 10th, 2012 at 3:51 am 

If you have trained with that iounrscttr for enough time to have been promoted to Shodan I think that he has every right to call you his Black Belt. He is your Sensei after all. The one thing that cannot be denied is what happens during this time spent together. Whether you are a young child or are an accomplished adult, when you learn from one person for many years you pick up their traits. You learn to think the way they do, incorporating it into the way you think. Yes, you are you and nobody can take that away from you. Your movements and style of movement will have some of their mannerisms as they impart their qualities, even to the point of their respect for others, their outlook, their passion, to you. It’s the reciprocating relationship of being the product of your environment, and creating your environment.If this guy just trained “his” students for a few months, or even just a seminar or two, then NO that is not right. That may be some sort of inner pride issue going on with the Sensei. I know too many people who go to seminars and train with somebody, take a few pictures with them, and say they are that person’s student. It’s laughable and shameful, but it happens.I would think that if you put in 20 years with a particular iounrscttr, then you should be as proud to have him call you “his” black belt as he is to have you as a student. It’s not as much self boasting in most cases as it may seem.______I am D*** proud to have Shihan call me HIS black belt. He doesn’t promote many, not, at, all, and to be one of those rare students is a great honor to me. I’ve been with him for a very long time, and will continue. I have had many iounrscttrs, but Shihan is different.

• Regina

          June 16th, 2012 at 7:03 am

          so.Lets set this straight. First what you read is based on non facts. By that I mean that they can’t be pvoern simply because there is on logical way to impartially gather enough real statistics to come to that conclusion. Even if it were possible to get this information, how much training and from what source would be required before the subjects would be considered qualified black belts?As nwohioguy stated there are lots of stories that have appeared of real situations where people trained in martial arts have defended themselves in muggings, rapes, …etc. Not all were even black belts.Your statement also does not consider that people are (for the most part) intelligent. If the martial arts did not really work, would millions of people study them for self defense?If the martial arts did not work why and how could they possibly have survived for hundreds(in some cases thousands)of years? Were and are all of the martial arts masters just that ignorant?Like nwohioguy, I too have trained for many, many years. During those years I’ve also had to defend myself from attack several times. Fortunately I have never been seriously injured, due to my training.As for the link you posted, I have not bothered to view it. The question alone was so un-founded that I saw no reason to bother with viewing the video too.