There are a lot of claims out there about martial arts from boasts about effectiveness “on the street,” to accusations of simply being a stable for training violence. Well, it seems that there may be some truth to the accusations as well as some misconceptions. The peer-reviewed study, linked below, looked at adolescent girls and compared levels of aggression and anger between practitioners of Judo (judoka), Karate (karateka) and a standard set of adolescent anger scores. It would seem that karate, often associated with violence because of the punching and kicking, does not actually promote any increases in aggression. On the other side, Judo, which means “The Gentle Way” in Japanese, was associated with an increase of aggression.
While we still believe martial arts to be a valuable tool for self development it is important to match the goals of our students to the know outcomes. We’d like to see more research along these lines before we draw any real conclusions but the initial impression is to look at karate if your goal to manage a hot temper and consider our Jiu-Jitsu program if you have problems with being shy and timid.