I’ve had torn and pulled muscles. Strains and sprains. Bumps and bruises all over my body. Scrapes and cuts. Tore up my shoulders. Slipped vertebrae in my back and neck. Tilted and twisted pelvis. Concussions. And cleat scars on my legs from jerks sliding into me cleats first!

Wait, cleats? There’s no cleats in martial arts! That’s because none of those injuries I suffered in the paragraph above came from martial arts training or even competing. Those came from baseball and the most cutthroat league of them all, Church League Softball. You think I’m joking, but all of my worst injuries came from baseball and softball. I’ve had very few injuries from my martial arts training.

One excuse I get from parents that don’t want to sign their children up for martial arts classes is that it’s, “too dangerous”. Even most adults give me this excuse as to why they do not want to train. It’s time to break this myth!

Virtually all other sports produce more injuries than martial arts. Most know that football is injury prone, especially with the discovery of CTE (Chronic traumatic encephalopathy). However, basketball, baseball, and soccer all are in the top ten sports with the most injuries, with basketball sitting at the top. Yet very few give the excuse that basketball or baseball are too dangerous for their child to participate in.

I would like to point out that MMA, boxing and kickboxing do a hold high risk of injuries. Keep in mind that I do not consider these as the same as traditional martial arts training. These are combat sports that make use of martial arts techniques and are not necessarily martial arts in and of themselves. The unique thing about these combative sports, however, is that they too are considered safer than football and basketball, among other sports. The reason for this, is at the core of why martial arts training is very safe.

The focus of most sports is to score a point or win the game. Therefore, the training is geared towards developing your skills and body to score that point. Not to protect yourself. Martial arts training is all about training your body and developing your skills to protect your body from harm. We go out of our way to build up the body and health to avoid injuries. Most sports sacrifice the body in order to win the game. A martial artists, in attempting to protect one-self or family, will sacrifice a “win” in order to protect the body. For instance, walking away from a bad situation, even if it means taking a hit to your ego.

Now, you may be conjuring up images of martial artists punching hard slabs or kicking posts to produce small fractures in the bones to heal back stronger and to build calluses. Maybe you are also thinking of punching each other to learn how to better deal with hard hits. That can’t be injury free can it? It’s not. That’s why it’s rarely done these days. It’s also geared more towards those combative sports.

Believe it or not, martial arts, as traditional as they may be, have evolved in their training methods. We have discovered safer ways to train over the years with more widespread training, research, and technology available. There are still some “old school” martial artists out there, but they are few and far between as it’s just not as needed these days.

With all of that said, the martial arts do still have a risk of injury. Its just not high risk. It’s more along the risk level of going for a jog or riding your bike. Bumps and bruises, a long with occasional pulled muscle, are the most common injuries. Occasionally a serious injury will happen. In the nearly thirty years I’ve been involved in martial arts, there are only a small handful of serious injuries I’ve had or seen. The worst being a broken arm, some serious joint injuries, and some broken digits. In every case, the student recovered fairly quickly and returned to class in short amount of time, if taking any time off.

While injuries are still a part of training, it is important to point out how many injuries get prevented from martial arts training. One of the first things I teach all students, is how to fall correctly to limit impact and reduce injures from those falls. One of the most common acts of injury as we get older, is falling to the ground. It takes one misstep to break a bone or hand out a concussion. With decent training, those injuries become dramatically reduced or even removed.

I trained with a gentleman years ago that was just under black belt rank in Hapkido when an incident went down. Shortly after celebrating the New Year at a local sports bar, he took one step outside the exit to head home and was welcomed by a stranger wielding a large metal chain. The stranger instantly began striking my friend with the chain repeatedly. My friend was able to keep his hands up in the guard position and dodge some of the strikes long enough to escape and get to the emergency room.

The doctors were amazed he was able to stay conscious during the heavy hits to the head that left him with an unsettling number of stitches across his head and face. His martial arts training had built up his instincts to both physically protect himself, but also created a calmer mental state to be aware of what was happening and how to proceed to escape. For an untrained person, that could have been their last day on earth.

One thing to keep in mind is that every martial arts style and every instructor is different. Some do carry a higher risk and others a lower risk. It does not necessarily correlate to if the art/training is good or not. My studio is very safe, and we rarely have injuries, yet we still do full contact sparring (striking and grappling). It may seem strange that there would not be more injuries when someone is trying to hit you as hard as they can or attempting to break your arm until you tap out, but it’s true. It all comes down to the process leading up to sparring.

There are a few reasons for this lack of injury. One, there is mutual respect between students. So instead of a hard hit to the nose that could break it, maybe they strike the abdomen instead or strike the forehead. The intent of injury isn’t there, even with a hard hit, and that is important. Another reason for this is that I have full control over who is sparring in my classroom. I don’t match up a high rank with a low rank and let them go at it. If there is a considerable difference in rank/experience, I make sure the higher rank controls the sparring match with limited contact. Lastly, I don’t let anyone spar until a specific rank, which is usually no less than 6 months of training to reach that rank. This gives me and fellow students plenty of time to learn control and respect amongst each other.

Where I’ve seen injuries come about in sparring, its usually when there is a mismatch in skill. When the skill level is matched up, even at heavy contact, the injury level is quite minimal. The better you are at striking or applying joint locks, the better you are at defending them and protecting yourself properly. I made this mistake years ago and have a small scar under my eye as a reminder.

I trained with a fellow black belt of similar rank years ago. We’ll call him Brutus. The majority of students in class were youth students or lower rank adults. Due to this, Brutus and I loved sparring with each other as we could go all out, knowing that each other could handle full contact. One day, we were sparring in class where we rotated to a new student every minute with a fifteen second break between students. There were approximately twenty students in class, Brutus and I were the highest ranks. There were a few older adults that were just learning how to spar, and the rest were youth students.

As we rotated from student to student, I would go very light and easy as to not injury the other students of lesser size and skill. Eventually, Brutus and I matched up. He was pumped to get some solid sparring in, and I… I was stuck in the “calm and gentle” sparring mode that the other students lulled me into. As the matched started, I casually slid in with a light punch to the gut with my guard down (dumb no matter who you are sparring). Brutus, on the other hand, went into beast mode and turned quickly to throw out a full power round kick to my wide-open face. His shin, unabated, landed square on my left eye.

I stood straight up and was preparing to fall down unconscious. To my surprise, I retained consciousness. I had never been hit that hard in my life. I’d like to point out that I was five foot ten and about one hundred and sixty pounds at the time. Brutus was about six foot four and a solid two fifty. There was no reason why I should still be standing at this point. I looked back at Brutus to see a stunned look on his face. Followed by a stuttering voice stating, “dude, you need to go to the locker room and look at your face in the mirror.”

At this point, the blood began pouring out of my face and eyeball. Thankfully, a little water thrown on my face and I was good to go back out and get my revenge. That day, I walked out of the studio with a bloody face and bright red eyeball, and Brutus walked out with a fat, split open lip, courtesy of my heel. We both learned a lesson that day.

The point of this is, we were on completely different levels mentally when we sparred that day. Of all the times we had sparred, that was the only time we had even the slightest injury. This is why we see very few injuries at martial arts tournaments as well. We separate by rank and age, and even height for younger competitors. This equal level of skill is an integral part of protecting students from injury.

With all of this said, the biggest attribute that contributes to a student’s safety, is the student themselves placing effort into keeping themselves safe. Nearly every serious injury I’ve seen in martial arts over the years was due to the student disregarding advice, rules or common sense.

Listen to your instructor and have common sense, and your likelihood of injury goes way down. Now go out and safely punch each other in the face!