When I think of martial arts and soccer, it is inevitable to NOT think about Shaolin Soccer. This comedy movie mixes Shaolin Kung Fu and soccer. The idea is to bring the benefits of martial arts to soccer. While the movie is goofy showing players doing acrobatic moves during a game of soccer, it makes you wonder: what if all soccer players practice martial arts, what would the benefits be?
Here are the 7 benefits that soccer players get from practicing martial arts:
- Develop a Strong Balance
- Develop a Strong Discipline
- Develop an Ability for Acrobatic Moves
- Increase Flexibility
- Boost Self-Confidence
- Improve Concentration
- Respect for Teammates, Coaches, and Opponents
It’s crazy to think martial arts can be so advantageous in a team sport such as soccer, where the primary goal is to score goals and win games, rather than defeating other people and protecting oneself. Let’s look at the benefits in more detail.
Table of Contents
- 1. Develop a Strong Balance
- 2. Develop a Strong Discipline
- 3. Develop an Ability for Acrobatic Moves
- 4. Increase Flexibility
- 5. Boost Self-Confidence
- 6. Improve Concentration
- 7. Respect for Teammates, Coaches, and Opponents
1. Develop a Strong Balance
It is always fascinating seeing what the human body is capable of, but it is rather uncommon to see its full potential. It is common to see images of people practicing martial arts extending one leg at a 125-degree angle or more to kick their opponents while keeping their balance with the other leg. Not even mentioning whenever they do similar kicks while jumping and landing without falling.
The main benefit of practicing martial arts is achieving balance not only physically, but also mentally. Martial arts are often seen as a full-body workout. It engages all the parts of your body to do kicks, punches, blocks, jumps, and different moves most people are not used to due to a lack of proper balance.
You might think you need strong legs to jump or kick. Also, you might think you need strong arms and a strong chest to punch and block.
While those are critical to accomplishing those moves with power, the reality is the core muscles provide the balance to each move we do in our lives. Hence, martial arts, such as MMA also known as mixed martial arts, puts a major emphasis on core strengthening training.
If you are a soccer player, your core is engaged when you do common moves such as shooting and passing the ball, jumping, and running without you even realizing it. That’s why soccer players who practice martial arts have a tendency to not get injured easily as they are constantly strengthening their core.
Injuries occur when the balance is off, and core muscles provide that stability. Weak core or stabilizer muscles, lead to soccer players being at risk of injuries. Considering the practice of martial arts to develop a strong balance.
2. Develop a Strong Discipline
One of the reasons parents consider enrolling their kids in martial arts is to teach them discipline in life. Don’t get me wrong, parents of soccer players might consider that too.
One person can argue that players showing up every day for training or following the coach’s tactics during a game are ways to enhance discipline.
As a soccer player who played in high-level soccer academies, college soccer, semi-professional soccer, and even trained a few times with professional soccer players, I can only nod and agree with you.
Despite that, martial art is an individual sport (it can be trained with other people though) and soccer is a team sport. When a soccer player fails to follow the coach’s tactics, there are teammates who can cover for those mistakes.
During combat, if you fail, nobody else is covering you. It’s on you.
Failures can be caused by distractions such as not tackling on the time, not eating the right food prior to the game, and not being mentally prepared to play your first professional game, among others.
Martial arts forces you to define all kinds of goals. Physical, mental, and even emotional goals. Most importantly, to work towards those goals, so. Martial arts instructors don’t allow students to talk, chat, or laugh, but rather stay focused and pay attention to the instructor.
Building strong self-discipline is helpful for soccer players on and off the pitch, whether that means following the team’s tactics, eating the right meals before and after training and soccer games, allowing the player’s body to get the necessary rest, don’t go to parties, don’t talk back to coaches in a disrespectful manner, etc.
3. Develop an Ability for Acrobatic Moves
Martial arts such as Taekwondo, also known as Tae (foot), Kwon (hand), and Do (art), train the body from the feet to the fist focusing on techniques around kicking and punching. Unfortunately, you cannot take those punching techniques to a game of soccer, otherwise referees will show you the red card frequently.
On the flip side, you can take the kicking techniques learned in Taekwondo and apply them during a soccer game to make acrobatic moves. If you don’t trust me, you should see with your own eyes how Zlatan Ibrahimovic has done it on several occasions during his career. This has allowed the Swedish soccer player to score incredible goals that make people wonder: How did he do that?
It’s funny because every time I watch that video, my jaw drops in awe staring at the “impossible” acrobatic moves Zlatan pulls out of nowhere, leading to fantastic goals that make the soccer game ticket pay itself for those who watch him playing live.
One remarkable aspect of Zlatan putting into practice Taekwondo during soccer games is to break the common misconception of tall players not having enough balance, agility, and flexibility to pull those acrobatic moves.
The reality is any player could do it. However, soccer training doesn’t emphasize acrobatic moves. But that’s the bread and butter of Taekwondo. Therefore, translating Taekwondo kicking techniques onto the pitch becomes second nature, even for Zlatan who is playing at the highest level at 41 years old. Now, that’s impressive!
4. Increase Flexibility
Martial arts and soccer share something in common: increasing your flexibility to decrease or prevent injury prevention. However, flexibility plays another major role in athletes practicing sports that require a variety range of motions: to help keep your body balanced.
Earlier I mentioned the core is the main group of muscles that keeps your body balanced. However, when executing moves that are not usual to the body, such as kicking at a more than 120-degree angle, the joints in the hips and legs are executing a higher-than-usual range of motion.
A common way coaches and soccer players think of ways to increase flexibility is by stretching. If at some point you practiced soccer in your life, you probably heard about static and dynamic stretching.
Static stretching requires keeping your body holding a position for a period of time, typically 10 to 15 seconds per position. Soccer players do static stretches at the end of training sessions.
On the other hand, dynamic stretching requires the continuous movement of your body as you hold a position for a very short period of time, typically for 1 or 2 seconds. Soccer players typically do dynamic stretches during the warm-up to help increase muscle activation.
Another not so commonly mentioned way to increase flexibility is by doing exercises requiring a good range of motion. As mentioned before, kicking is one of those exercises.
The difference between soccer kicks and martial art kicks is primarily the angle of the kick. Kicking a soccer ball typically makes your legs reach a 30, 45, or even 90-degree angle.
In martial arts varies depending on the kind of combat you exercise. However, you could easily get see 120, 145, and even 180-degree angle kicks. That’s crazy!
Hence, soccer players who practice martial arts will tend to have better flexibility than their teammates.
Now, it is worth mentioning some martial arts require the body to work on a higher range of motion than others, meaning, some require more flexibility than others such as:
- Taekwondo
- Kung Fu
- Karate
- Capoeira
Speaking of this last martial art, Brazilian soccer players who practice capoeira get an additional set of skills that help them become good soccer players.
Finally, martial arts requiring less flexibility include the following:
- Sambo
- Judo
- Boxing
- Brazilian Jiu Jitsu
5. Boost Self-Confidence
Most martial arts involve a certain level of fighting with an opponent. This doesn’t necessarily mean people practice martial arts to fight with whoever they see frowning at them in the street, although it might become useful when someone else is threatening you. In fact, practicing martial arts gives you self-defense skills!
Now, the act of winning a fight boosts the morale of someone, making them feel accomplished, better than someone else, stronger, powerful, or simply the fact that you are able to be better at fighting than your opponent.
In other words, you gain confidence.
This is not too far from soccer. One team wins, and the other loses. But soccer is a team sport, martial arts is an individual practice.
Despite a team winning a game in soccer, chances are not everyone in your team has high confidence in themselves. This could be due to a number of reasons such as not controlling the ball correctly, missing several opportunities to score a goal, lack of playing time and staying on the bench for most of the games, or even not being called into the squad for games at all.
Whatever it is, soccer players can lose confidence which directly impacts their performance. Practicing martial arts not only helps soccer players train parts of the body that don’t get the proper training in soccer, including your mind.
6. Improve Concentration
If there’s something that martial arts teach people is to stay focused. Looking in the wrong direction during combats might be the difference between winning or losing a fight in a blink-of-an-eye.
In a similar way occurs in soccer, not listening or following the coach’s advice during a soccer game might be the reason soccer players don’t get on time to score a goal, or to prevent a goal. It might be the difference between winning, losing, and even drawing a game (which depending on the situation, it could be seen as a win or loss).
As I mentioned before, your teammates can cover up your mistakes during a soccer game. During a martial art fight, is on you and only you. That’s why it forces people to increase their level of concentration, to not miss out on opportunities that might not come when you have in front of you stronger opponents.
7. Respect for Teammates, Coaches, and Opponents
What is the first thing you see during martial arts competitions and classes? Picture two people bowing as a synonym for respect.
If it is not enough, to do it once at the beginning of the class, students are taught to bow at the end of the class too.
Respect is a major teaching component and one of the first aspects martial art students are educated on. Showing respect for teammates, coaches or instructors, an opponents is acknoledging the presence of other people on earth and accepting them for who they are.
Soccer players demeriting other teams prior to a game whether it is because the other team is short, is in a bad position in the league, doesn’t have resources to practice soccer adequately, etc is a sign of disrespect.
Oftentimes, life has a way of making things work out, including in soccer, by showing disrespectful players they were wrong after losing a game against that team they were demeriting prior to the game.
But that is just one example of the stories you hear in soccer. It all comes down to a lack of respect.
Considering martial arts to help soccer players raise awareness of respect among others is an invaluable lesson they can apply not just in the sport, but also for the rest of their lives.
