Martial arts, also known as fighting systems, are bodies of codified practices or traditions of training for unarmed and armed combat, usually without the use of guns and other modern weapons. People study martial arts for various reasons including fitness, self-cultivation (meditation), mental/character development, and self-defense.
The martial arts, perhaps due to a half-century of dramatic portrayals in popular media (see Orientalism), have been inextricably bound in the Western imagination to East Asian cultures and people. Martial arts are by no means unique to East Asia, however. Humans around the world have always had to develop ways to defend themselves from attack, often without weapons. As a result, there are many martial arts known and practiced; for further information on a particular art, see the list of martial arts.
For information about martial arts stretching