Autism

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) can manifest in communication issues, behavioural problems, difficulties with social norms along with many others.

Working as a sports lecturer I have witnessed many cases of students with ASD that struggle in the classroom, but get them in the gym or sports hall and they thrive. They are focussed, they work well and they listen! So, I wondered whether Karate with its fairly ordered regimen, hierarchy and discipline could be a useful tool for someone with ASD.

The strongest evidence comes from a Systematic Review (SR) and another Meta-Analysis  (MA) (both gold standards of high quality research for the layman) conducted relatively recently. The SR (Amonkar et al., 2021) of 72 studies (1,939 participants) across participants with ASD ranging from 3 to 65 years of age and the MA (Hou et al., 2024) of 16 studies on social interaction skills and various physical activities. 

Conclusion -  there are medium-to-large improvements in motor and cognitive skills and  small-to-large sized improvements in social communication skills following martial arts training and the highest effect size (amount of improvement) on social interaction following Karate training; while a combined sport programme showed the least effect size.

For the full referenced blog including other studies follow this link