[MartialArts] Good Daily Stretch routines for Martial Artists

[RamboWanaBe]

Anyone know of any easy to do, in-front of the TV stretch routines to increase flexibility. Mainly for nice high kicking

 

[ChrisOX]

yes i know heaps but its kinda hard to expain in writing youtube perhaps? or just search google i guess, sorry i couldnt help any more, so why do u want to kick high?

 

[Mikasadan]

Anyone know of any easy to do, in-front of the TV stretch routines to increase flexibility. Mainly for nice high kicking

Yo Rambo,

Start with HIP FLEXOR STRETCHES..

STEP 1: Kneel down with your back straight
STEP 2: Step forward with your right foot while keeping your left knee on the floor. Put your hands on top of your right thigh.
STEP 3: Slide your back leg behind you until you feel the stretch in the front of the hip. To intensify the leg stretches, push your hip forward, straighten your body, and put your hands on your front knee. Hold for 10-12 seconds and then change sides.

QUADS

STEP 1: Lie face down (on the mat or on the floor). You can place your free hand in between your forehead and the floor to be more comfortable.
STEP 2: Maintaining your hips on the floor, bring your left leg up behind you and hold your foot. Keep your head down and your neck relaxed. Hold for about 10-12 seconds then repeat on the right leg.

HAMMIES

STEP 1: Stand and straighten your left leg on a bench, a step or a coffee table. Maintain that position with your left, supporting leg bent slightly. You can hold on to a couch or wall for support.
STEP 2: Gently bend forward from the hips until you feel the stretch in the back of the thigh, top of calf, and at the back of the knee. Without bouncing, hold for about 8 seconds, and then intensify the stretch by slowly leaning in further. Repeat the stretch on the other leg. Raise the height as your stretching capability increases

CALVES

STEP 1: Lean forward with your hand at shoulder level against a wall. Bend your right leg forward and extend the other leg with a straight knee behind.
STEP 2: Keeping your lower back flat, gently move your hips forward. Make sure to keep the heel of your left leg on the ground with your toes pointed towards the wall. Don't bounce. Hold for 10-15 seconds. Repeat on the other side.

Thats a basic start, opening up your hips and stregthening your abbductor muscles will help in injury prevention and hip flexion.. the key to nice high kicks.

Also practicing your balance will go a long way in Martial arts training, my favorite is kneeling on fit ball and doing hip rotations (think hula hoop), just make sure the TV is out of range.

MD

 

[RamboWanaBe]

Thanks Mikasadan, I have not tried these.

Before I asked the question I tried doing various sitting with leg out and bending over stretches, box splits, splits (obviously not all the way down yet), bend over touch my toes and that kneeling with your feet under your bottom like they do in Karate.

I will give you stretches a try tonight

 

[Mikasadan]

Thanks Mikasadan, I have not tried these.

Before I asked the question I tried doing various sitting with leg out and bending over stretches, box splits, splits (obviously not all the way down yet), bend over touch my toes and that kneeling with your feet under your bottom like they do in Karate.

I will give you stretches a try tonight

Dont bend over and touch your toes!! BAD news for your back!!!. try this to stretch your hips and lower back instead..

Legs wider than shoulder width apart hands on inner thighs and bend forward at the waist looking straight ahead, until you feel a stretch in you hammies, master this one..

MD

 

[Christian]

Dont bend over and touch your toes!! BAD news for your back!!!. try this to stretch your hips and lower back instead..

Legs wider than shoulder width apart hands on inner thighs and bend forward at the waist looking straight ahead, until you feel a stretch in you hammies, master this one..

MD

Not if you hold your shoulders back like a sldl

 

[Mikasadan]

Not if you hold your shoulders back like a sldl

Basically, dont round your back over.

MD

 

[kingpin]

Stretch 1
1. Sit on the floor with the souls of your feet facing each other
2. Move your feet in towards your crouch
3. Place pressure on your knees

This might actually take some time to achieve, eventually I would get someone to stand on my knees and hold the knees down on the ground. I don't recommend trying this until certain that a good deal of flex has been achieved.

Stretch 2
1. Sitting on the floor bring your right foot feet in and touch the left thigh so it looks like a number 4.
2. With you back straight and bending at the hip lean forward to touch your toes on your left foot.
3. Repeat with opposite leg.

Stretch 3
1. Standing lean forward with your back straight and bending at the hip only.
2. Let your upper body hang and try supporting yourself with your finger tips.
3. Once your flex improves you can support yourself on your knuckles and then palms.
4. Once your flex improves you can start to seperate your feet (do the splits) by pushing at the heels.

Stretch 4
1. Same stretch as 3 except your sitting down.
2. With some assistance get someone to push your upper body closer to the floor. Be sure to maintain a straight back and bend at the hips.

These are some of the stretching exercises that I would have to do at Taekwondo training, there are a lot more but you need a partner or a machine.

 

[trofius]

Things that helped me were wrming up first jogging on teh spot bike riding and starjumps, are all good.

A flexable mid section and hips helps heaps, more than you would expect.

my routine was :
butterfly stretch, ie soles of feet together, focus on getting teh knees on eth ground then moving the feet towards the groin, then work on leaning all teh way over on your legs..pulling your feet in with your hands and leaning on your legs / /kneed with your elbows helps.

next i would do hammy stretches, one leg out at 45deg, other foot in at groin lean into leg, also extend back arm over head towards extended toes. helps stretch you obliques, if you can touch your toes or feel flexable, try sitting on your other foot, rather than just having it bent in,

stretch your ass....oneleg strait, place other foot, beside thigh, across leg, knee up to chestpullplave opposite elbow on outside of knee andstretch,

or

lye on back bring kneed up to chest and push across your body, hips flat so that you feel your outer gluts stretching

for quads

standing and pull foot up behind you, lying on stomach and do a pushup keeping hips flat aginst grounds, yiu will feel it in your hip flexors, if you bend your knees, foot to ass, it is even better!!

hips
sit leg in front bent slightly and lean into them focusing on a bending at teh hips, you will feel it in your lower hip area not your back, if in your back you are arching up too much

do a kind of lung, back leg knee, and shin on the ground, other leg on foot in front, keep pushing the front leg forward, (ensure the foot is further forward than your knee) this will work those quads well, and hammy on front leg, eventually you will get a front back split..

I used to sit infront of the tv legs as far apart as they would go, relaxed, lean forward into it 10 seconds stretch and 5 seconds rest, pushing the legs further apart each time. remember to relaxe them and shake them around so they get some fresh blood..

I would sit on the floor doing my uni work stretching for a side split for hours at a time..

another good one for you abductors, is sitting like a hammy strecth, omne leg bent towards your groin, lean forward, other leg strait out sideways, now sit up strait, as you get more flexable lean toward theoes of theutstretched leg, firstly focus on getting your ass on teh ground then leaning sideways,. this is a good oblique stretch aswell.

I could do front back and full side splits, I could actually place my feet on besser bricks and still have my ass on the ground. Or sit up legs strait out in front , while leaning forward I could swing my legs right around throuh a split, to them being behind me, and me lying on my stomach,, can also still have sole touching in shoes, feet into groing knees on ground,

another excellant hammy stretch is to stand against a wall, and have someone pick upyour leg and push it into your chest.

as a guide, from ankle to ankle during a split, is about the same, and ankle to wrist when hand is held above your head, that is how hight you can potentially kick..

High kicks are pretty flashy, and fun to do, but if going really high like that you loose power, and it can get telegraphic, Short asses like me dont have a lot of choice but, lol, If you want to kick high, then get a bag and kick it as high as you can, to build up power and speed, at those heights the muscles are way out of their comfort zone

When stretching holding for 10 seconds will do squat, 20 secs will maintain, 30 seconds will start to improve, this is daily.... I would recomened doing each stretch 3-5 times, pushing further into it each time...

 

[RamboWanaBe]

Really? I had been touching my toes for years.

I also do the alternative method you mentioned.

 

[RamboWanaBe]

Hey Kingpin, I do your number 1 stretch, its very difficult to get the knees touching the floor, but that is a goal of mine.

I will try your other stretches soon.

 

[Tekkerz]

If you want to get some nice high kicks happening I would recommend a combination of static and dynamic stretching for the hamstrings, hip flexors/extensor and hip adductors/abductors.

The static stretches which have already been mentioned are good and I also recomend these:

Sit on the floor with you legs straight out in front of you with your feet about 30cm apart. If you have a carpet or floor surface with paralell lines its good but not a must.
first just reach out in front of you and touch your fingertips to a point or line which is comfortable for you and doesn't require any effort.
Next take a big breath into and try to fill expand your abdomen before your chest expands to full capacity, all the while drawing your hands back towards your body.
As you breath out again slowly push your hands forward until your breath is fully exhaled. You should find that your fingertips have reached a point or line on the floor which is further than the first time you did it.
Repeat this about ten times, each time you should stretch reach a little further than the last time, but of course you will ultimately come to a point where you cannot stretch any further.
do this every day, its easy to do when you are watching tv so no excuses.

A good dynamic stretch for the front kick is leg swings.
you need a space where you can take 4-6 long steps forward.
place your hands out in front of you with your palms down and arms straight and take a step forward with one foot, using the momentum of the step swing the back leg forward to touch your hands out in front of you, when you put that foot down in front of you repeat the action with your back foot, do this until you run out of space then turn around and move up to the other end of the space, repeat 4-5 times remembering that you are no trying to perfrom the kicking action but rather just swinging the foot forward and up as though it were a dead weight on the end of your leg.

This can be done with the inside and outside crescesnt kick movement (much like an axe-kick but apply the same idea of just swinging the foot through the range of movement) for the adductors/abductors.

If you have a handy chair or milk crate if your kicks arent too high yet, slowly perform the kicking movement and static hold your foot in that position for as long as you can, if there is a wall or surface next to the object you can lightly rest your foot against it but no more than 5 percent of possibly pressure should be applied, when your foot dips down and touches the object below it is time to finish. This can be done for both front kick and side kick on either leg.
I have held the front kick posistion for more then ten minutes one time, give it a try.

 

[kingpin]

Rambo, it takes a while to reach the floor, just dont force it mate. There was a really over anxious guy in my taekwondo class back in the day and the injuries he caused himself would have been laughable if they didnt end up with him being picked up in an ambulance on two seperate occasions.

 

[RamboWanaBe]

With the box splits (legs out to the side) is it considered incorrect to position your feet out?

If I keep my feet parallel, I feel too much stress on my knees, like the muscles are going to pop out the knee cap.

 

[kindred]

I have a stretching machine. If you wanna do it the easy way id suggest getting one of those. Get a cheap on thats what i did i think mine was $60 off eBay. They work but you have to use them every day for at least 20-30 minutes thats what i found anyway.

You could also try the stretches they teach you in class.

 

[Josh_GTiR]

Rambo, I do that stretch with my toes out.

 

[ChrisOX]

Hey Josh how many stretches have i shown u!

 

[Josh_GTiR]

Yeah, too many! You always say I am doing it wrong as well.

 

[ChrisOX]

cos u dont do em right to get the proper stretch out of it!