Abstract
Many martial arts popular in Western countries today (e.g. aikido, karate, tae kwon do) originated in Asia. Until the beginning of the previous century, they were mainly practised in that continent. From the early 1950s onwards, Asian martial arts became more popular in the West, which resulted in a real martial arts ‘boom’ in the early nineties (Theeboom and De Knop, 1999). Consequently, in recent decades, the practice of martial arts has become popular in many countries all over the world, as revealed by several participation studies indicating martial arts’ place on lists of most practised sports (e.g. Australia: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2009; Canada: Ifedi, 2008). Also, a study of sports participation in countries of the European Union revealed that martial arts are one of the most practised sporting activities in Europe (van Bottenburg et al., 2005). Furthermore, based on national research data on sports participation in the 25 member states of the EU, the authors found that in several countries (e.g. France, Spain, Italy, Slovenia, Poland) martial arts were among the top ten most practised sports in a club-related context.
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