circulation to the lower half of your body. It’s best to sit in meditation before your warm-up.
TWO WARM UPS
Here are two good methods to warm up. They are both effective, so choose one you like, or do a different one each workout.
Warm-up 1
This is a basic 8-minute warm-up that does a good job of preparing the body for training.
1. Shuffle around on the balls of your feet, rolling your shoulders and circling your arms. 2 minutes
2. Do shoulder lifts, arm swings, easy punches, easy knee lifts and trunk twists. 2 minutes
3. Swing your straight leg to the front, side and rear.
1 set, 10 reps –each leg in each direction, 2 minutes
4. Easy roundhouse kicks, front kicks, side kicks and back kicks.
1 set, 10 reps – each kick, each leg, 2 minutes
Warm-up 2
I have been using this warm up for about six months now in my class and when training alone. It’s a fairly quick way to prepare for training, and it does a thorough job.
1. Arm loosening: rotate arms forward and backward.
1 set, 10 reps – both arms, each direction
2. Good mornings: Place your hands behind your head, bend forward until your upper body is parallel with the floor and then return to the upright position.
1 set, 15 reps
3. Side bends: Spread your feet and stretch your arms over your head. Bend as far as you can to the sides.
1 set, 15 reps in each direction
4. Side-straddle hop (jumping jacks)
1 set, 15 reps
5. Knee rotations: Place your knees together and rest your hands on them. Rotate your knees in each direction.
1 set, 15 reps -- each direction
6. Dynamic leg stretching: this is a combination of lifting and swinging your straight leg upward. If you do it too slowly, it takes too much muscle action, which is not what you want. If you do it too fast, you could injure yourself. Your objective is to swing your legs a little higher on each rep.
Front: Hold onto a wall or chair back and swing your straight leg up in front of you
1 set, 10 reps – both legs
Side: Face the wall or chair and swing your straight leg up to the side. Hold your foot in a side kick position
1 set, 10 reps – both legs
Rear curl: Face the wall or chair back and swing your leg back. When it’s at its highest point, curl your lower leg as if trying to kick your rear.
1 set, 10 reps – each leg
7. Chamber: Face the wall or chair back and swing your chambered leg up as if preparing to side kick or roundhouse. If the chambers for these two kicks are completely different in your style, do one method of chambering this workout and do the other method the next time you train alone.
1 set, 10 reps – each leg.
That is all there is to it. You can add reps as needed, but I wouldn’t advise doing any less than what is noted here. It’s still a good idea after completing this warm up to go easy the first few minutes of your training.
COOL-DOWN
Cooling down at the conclusion of your workout is just as important as the warm up, though it’s most often neglected. When you have survived a 60 minute grueling solo workout, you just want to hit the shower and crash on the sofa. Spending another five or ten minutes doing cool down exercises is the last thing you feel like doing. But it’s most important that you do because cooling down releases lactic acid that gathers in the muscles during a hard training session, which reduces that post workout stiffness and soreness.
Cool-down Exercises
Lightly stretch your legs, shoulders and arms for five to ten minutes at the completion of your workout. Use the same stretches you did to warm up your muscles and the same set and rep count, but do them with less intensity. Remember that you are cooling down.
Warm up properly, train safely and cool down properly and you will have many healthy, injury-free years in the martial arts.
In this section we are going to explore ways to improve your kicking that are fun and innovative. We will look at how you can train alone to strengthen a weak kick, quickly improve a new one and explore ways to even increase the speed, power and flexibility in kicks you have been doing for a long time. We will also look at a few unusual kicks to see how you can use them in the street and in competition. As always, let’s begin with the basics.
VARIATIONS OF THE BASIC KICKS
Let’s begin with the basic four: front, round, side and back. These are the foundation of all leg techniques, which you must master before you can expect to perfect other ways of kicking. In addition, it’s the front, round, side and back kicks that trained fighters commonly rely on in a self-defense situation. Hopefully, no one thinks they are going to use a leaping, spinning, cartwheel kick against a 245-pound ex-con who has spent the last ten years pumping iron in the joint and fighting other cons. Most martial artists who have fought in the street say that it was their fast and powerful basics that saved their bacon, not those fancy ones seen in silly movies.
A good way to thoroughly understand your basic kicks is to analyze the many ways they can be executed. Contrary to what you may have been told, the way that your school teaches the roundhouse, side kick, front kick and back kick is not the only way the basic kicks can be done. I mention this because there are narrow-minded styles and systems that teach that their way is the only way. This is nonsense. While there are certainly many ways to execute these kicks incorrectly, such as with poor balance, improper body mechanics, wrong angles and so on, there are many varied ways to execute them correctly. Not only are there variations among styles and systems, there are often variations found within the same fighting art.
I don’t see a problem with this. What I do have a problem with are teachers who insist that their students kick exactly as they do. How can they expect this? How can a short-legged, broad-hipped student kick the same way as one who is long-legged and narrow-hipped? He cannot, nor should he be pushed to do so.
