Determinants of the attitude towards combat sports and martial arts

The development of combat sports and martial arts oc curred in Poland at the beginning of the 1980s, mainly thanks to the mass media, which stimulated social interest in Eastern martial arts by presenting the unusual physical fitness of training persons and hand-to-hand fighting skills. Martial arts with a centuries-long tradition are regarded in social opinions as a carrier of many desired values and function as an education system for young people in Eastern societies. Apart from health benefits, they have supported moral education, have decreased social brutality and have provided positive models of behaviour, being a source of self-satisfaction at the same time [1,2,3,4,5,6]. According to ideological principles, on the basis of the tradition of warrior cultures, training persons try to achieve psychophysical improvement and self-fulfilment by practicing combat techniques [7]. Positive asceticism combines body exercises with conscious self-discipline and is oriented towards moral and spiritual development [8]. When de scribing advantages brought by this type of exercises, Herri gel [9] mentions the aggression prevention skill, the skill in controlling one’s own emotions and the ability to react calmly in emergency situations. It must be noticed, however, that studies conducted in Central Europe indicate different specific ways of perception of martial arts, which may be influenced