Lesley Jackson kick starts the Martial Edge campaign to get everyone to stub out their cigarettes. Your performance will improve, you will feel better and so will your finances. We at Martial Edge want help you to improve your training and enjoyment of the martial arts so please, if you are giving up the ciggies, let us know how you get on by emailing us at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it – let us be your helpline!

Now readers, I would like you to imagine a scene. A martial artist gets up in the morning, eats a healthy breakfast of muesli and orange juice and goes for a run before hitting the training hall to do some bag work. Whilst on the run he gets a little bored, puts his mouth over a car exhaust to breath in some fumes to make himself feel better. After feeling a momentary high of carbon monoxide poisoning, he gets into the training hall to practise his punches on a bag. During this time, he again feels an urge to do something reckless. This time, he walks to the bank and draws out £2000 in cash. When he arrives back to the training hall, he lays out some aluminium foil, piles the money onto the foil, lights a match and sets fire to the money. Now the man is feeling ill due to voluntarily inhaling carbon monoxide and skint because he has just seen a month’s wages gone up in smoke. He carries on training but has to keep stopping every couple of minutes to cough up some phlegm, which does not impress the attractive lady martial artist who has just walked in for a bit of extra Kata practise and light flirting.

Of course, this is a story and the man is clearly a bit mental. However, it is also true as this is what basically happens when you smoke. You are voluntarily breathing poison into your body and setting fire to a lot of hard earned cash. But none of that matters because you eat muesli for breakfast and do a martial art, so smoking a few cigarettes will not make any difference to your health because you do lots of exercise. Wrong. You are probably making matters worse by exercising and smoking due to the sharp rise in blood pressure your body will experience when smoking a cigarette. Your heart and lungs will have to work double time, working hard due to the exercise and being choked by the fumes they are being held back with.

The Physical Effects of Smoking and Exercise

There are a hundred and one arguments against smoking and we are not going to go into all of them here but with regards to taking exercise and more specifically, a martial art, there are some very definite reasons as to why combining smoking and physical activity is not a good idea. The analogy I have given above relates to someone who smokes a packet of 20 cigarettes a day but even a few a week can have the same effects that are listed below:

• Smoking decreases the body’s ability to absorb oxygen

The human body needs oxygen pumped around the body via the blood stream in order for its muscles to work. When the body exercises, it therefore needs more oxygen to feed the muscles that are working harder. The carbon monoxide inhaled via a cigarette actively decreases the body’s ability to absorb oxygen, thereby decreasing the amount of oxygen that can be transported around the muscles when you are exercising. Cigarettes also contain tar, which coats the lungs making it even harder to breathe.

• Smoking makes the heart work even harder than it has to

When you are exercising the heart, which is the pump that motors the flow of blood around the body, increases its rate to keep up with the muscles’ demand for more oxygen. When you smoke, the heart rate also goes up to keep a sufficient amount of oxygen distribution. Therefore, it stands to reason that if you smoke and exercise at the same time, the heart is working double-double time to keep the body oxygenated. This is uncomfortable for you and puts a ridiculous strain upon your heart; if you suffer from high blood pressure the strain could be even more dangerous.

• Smoking increases fatigue during and after exercise

Due to the extra strain put on your body whilst both smoking and exercising, your body will have less endurance and you will feel fatigued both quicker and for longer. The lack of oxygen, difficulty breathing, coughing and choking due to increased phlegm and the strain on your heart will all contribute to you feeling unnecessarily tired. Your performance will not improve at the same rate as a non-smoker, so why make life harder for yourself by smoking?

Weight Gain and Depression

Smoking is clearly not good for us, so what are some of the reasons why perfectly intelligent people continue to do so? Smoking is nice, it makes us feel good, can be a group activity and can help to keep your weight down. Clearly we are not encouraging anyone to take up smoking but it is important to understand why people smoke and find it so hard to give up.

One of the reasons why smokers may be put off giving up, particularly women, is that they fear they will get fat as a result. The nicotine in your body acts as an appetite suppressant and the tar prevents you smelling and tasting food. Giving up smoking may kick start your appetite in the form of cravings and the improved taste and smell will mean you enjoying the experience of food much more. However, the cravings are temporary and will calm down and what’s wrong with enjoying your food? This is where exercise really comes into its own. If you do gain a couple of pounds, you will simply burn this off during the exercise as you will need to eat more anyway.

The Fitness Skeptic “Coach Hale why are you so skeptical?” “Why do you have such a negative view of the fitness industry?” “You are so cynical.” I hear these types of questions and statements on a weekly basis. The people that approach me with these statements are almost always supplement salesman, homeopathy practitioners, equipment salesman etc.. Generally, people that do not like to have their authority questioned.

Another reason giving up smoking is difficult is the possible risk of depression. Whilst smoking, nicotine increases the body’s levels of dopamine and enhances the effects of serotonin. In other words, smoking increases the body’s happy chemicals and stopping this may make us feel sad. However, exercise has the same effects as smoking. During and after exercising, our dopamine levels increase so we will have the same high gained from a dose of the drug nicotine so the effects are balanced out again.

Giving Up

Kicking the habit may not be easy but neither is getting a black belt in a martial art so we martial artists are perfectly prepared for the challenge of giving up smoking. These are some of the immediate physical benefits of putting the packet of cigarettes away: (figures taken from the Scottish NHS)

• Within 20 minutes your blood pressure and pulse returns to normal.
• Within 20 hours carbon monoxide clears from your body. Oxygen levels rise and you have more energy.
• Within 3 days your breathing becomes easier as your bronchial tubes begin to relax.
• Within a few weeks your fingers lose their yellow stains and your skin looks better.
• Within 3 months your circulation is improved.
• Within 3-9 months your lungs are clear of most of the mucus and tar that has accumulated over the years. You feel fitter and free of coughs and wheezing.
• Within a year your risk of a heart attack has fallen to about half that of a smoker.

Our Martial Edge Top Tips for giving up smoking are:

• Keep a diary; write down your experiences of before, during and after giving up. Send it to us at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
• Set a definite date. This could be an anniversary, New Years or national no smoking day.
• Change your smoking routine and use your diary to identify your ‘smoking hot spots’
• Keep up your training – this is a routine you want to keep up.
• Use nicotine replacement patches or gum to help alleviate the nicotine addiction.
• Involve your family, friends and training buddies – they will give you a hard time when you need it!
• Watch the money add up – you could even put it aside in a savings account and watch what you would have spent on cigarettes tot up.
• Reward yourself: you have done well! - eat a cake, buy a DVD or new pair of trainers – you can now as you have extra money and the exercise will burn off the cake!
• Don’t punish yourself if you fall off the wagon – giving up smoking is not easy and few people manage it first time. Just stub out the cigarette and start again. You will manage it eventually.

If you like your martial arts but also a ciggie, give your body and wallet a break. Give up smoking, keep your weight down and feel good at the same time. It’s a win, win, win situation.

Author Profile: Lesley Jackson

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Lesley Jackson, black belt and Taekwondo teacher is deputy Editor of Martial Edge.

Also by Lesley Jackson:

• Sneaking under the Wire
• Taekwondo British Championships
• Liu Bin’s Zhuang Gong Bagua Zhang

Take part in the Martial Edge Quit Smoking blog: send us your diaries on This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

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Keywords : martial arts, quit smoking, smoking, cigs, training, impact on fitness, ciggies, helpline, help me quit smoking

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