5 Ways CrossFit Can Improve Your Martial Arts Skills

If you’re a martial artist, you can always look for ways to improve your skills. You can work with people more experienced than yourself. You can take private lessons. Or you can cross-train in other sports, like CrossFit.

With the proper training methods, CrossFit can help build your strength, endurance, agility, and more.

Here are five ways CrossFit can turn you into a better martial artist.

#1 Faster And More Powerful Kicks

There is a big focus on leg work in CrossFit. You can do deadlifts, cleans, squats, thrusters, lunges, wall ball, rowing, assault bikes, and a host of other exercises to strengthen the lower half of your body.

Because these exercises are usually done at high repetitions – and within a time limit – not only are you strengthening your legs, you are gaining power and speed.

After just a few months of CrossFit, you will notice the improvement in the power and speed of your kicks. You will go from having decent kicks to having head-turning, Sam-A Gaiyanghadao kicks.

#2 Better Stances And Takedown Defense

In addition to improving your kicks, all of the leg work can also improve your stances, a key aspect of the martial arts.

Before CrossFit, you may have a decent horse stance and twist stance. But after CrossFit, you may have one of the deepest stances and best takedown defenses at your gym.

With the right training, you will be stuffing takedowns like ONE Featherweight World Champion Martin “The Situ-Asian” Nguyen.

#3 Improved Agility

While all the leg work can improve your kicks and your stances, CrossFit also embraces working out the shoulders and the abs. Pull-ups, muscle-ups, push presses, clean and presses, and a variety of other exercises work the shoulders, while toes-to-bar is usually the ab workout of choice.

Guess what happens when you hang from a pull-up bar? Your upper body becomes more agile. As an additional bonus, this also makes various locks involving your arms significantly easier to pull off.

ONE heavyweight contender Alain “The Panther” Ngalani is a prime example of how martial artists can benefit from being agile.

#4 Stronger All-Around Defense

Being that you are improving your strength in basically every part of your body, it should come as no surprise that another positive result of CrossFit training is that your defense becomes stronger.

Not only that, but in the event you do not block a strike, you will be able to take a shot like ONE Flyweight Muay Thai World Champion Rodtang “The Iron Man” Jitmuangnon and keep on going.

#5 Improved Endurance

Crossfit has you doing a variety of exercises either in a specific amount of time, or to find your personal best time for a specific workout. Both of these concepts lead to pushing oneself while working out with weights.

You will always leave a CrossFit workout exhausted and drenched in sweat. You will always enter the next workout ready to better your time, improve on a lift, or finally get that muscle-up.

Because the rest of life moves at a much slower pace than a CrossFit Workout Of The Day, attempting and achieving these physical goals leads to skyrocketing endurance levels.

You might even be able to keep pace with 12-time Flyweight World Champion Demetrious “Mighty Mouse” Johnson.