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1 Warming Up

I know a champion fighter whose idea of warming up prior to a hard sparring session is to shake his legs a little and shrug his shoulders a couple times, if he does anything at all. Most of the time he just jumps right into the fray as soon as he ties on his belt. Does this mean that it’s okay not to warm up? It definitely does not. My friend has just been lucky so far. One of these days, a cold muscle is going to go “Twang!” sending him to the sidelines for several months.

Keep in mind that your body may not be telling your brain the truth. Your legs, back and shoulders may feel loose and ready, especially on warm summer days, but it’s still vitally important that you thoroughly warm up before you begin stressing your muscles, tendons and joints with kicks, punches and leaps. That readiness you feel as you change out of your street clothes into your training gear is a mix of enthusiasm and adrenaline. Don’t let that fool you into believing that your body is ready. It isn’t.

A proper warm up extends your endurance, prevents injuries and helps you achieve your training objective.

BUILD YOUR ENDURANCE

If you have ever warmed up by simply shaking your legs and shrugging your shoulders a couple of times, and then jumped right into a wild sparring session, you probably found yourself gasping for wind a few minutes later. The reason? You didn’t properly prepare your heart, that all-important muscle that pumps oxygenated blood to all your moving parts. When your heart is included in your warm up, you are better prepared for the aerobic stress of sparring or vigorous kata.

WARD OFF INJURIES

When all your body parts are well lubricated and moving smoothly from your warm up, you dramatically reduce the chance of injury. Think of your cold muscles, tendons and ligaments as being fragile as glass, and when you put excessive strain on them, they are at risk of breaking.

Your warm up needs to elevate your internal temperature a few degrees, elevate your pulse and respiration rate and get all your moving parts well lubricated. Even when you have reached this state, you should still hold off for a few minutes from doing those super-low stances and throwing kicks and punches that require hard snapping. Don’t think of this as babying yourself or as not being macho. Think of it as training smart. There is no such thing as a Joints and Tendons are Us store where you can get replacements.

That rip you feel in your hamstring muscle is nature’s way of saying that you should have warmed up more before throwing high kicks.

ACHIEVE YOUR GOALS

When your body is properly warmed and lubricated in preparation for your training, your techniques will flow more smoothly and be faster and stronger. The better you move, the more you improve. But when your muscles are cold, you move stiffly and awkwardly and improvement slows or doesn’t occur at all.

THE MEDITATION WARM UP

I’m a firm believer in meditation, but I don’t like doing it in the traditional seiza posture, that position where you kneel onto your knees and sit back on your heels. I’ve been in some schools where it’s done after the warm-up and prior to the drills. The instructor tells the students to assume the sitting posture, close their eyes and have a moment of silence to prepare their brains for the learning that is to follow. This is all good and fine until the students have to get to their feet and begin a hard kicking drill. Their legs are stiff, maybe asleep and the kicks hurt for a few reps. Even the strict traditionalists know that this is risky to legs. Aikido teacher, Gakku Homma, says in his book Aikido for Life, “If you sit in seiza for a long time, your feet will go to sleep, so you cannot get up and move around easily for a while.”

Don’t use seiza as part of your warm up, because you are not warming anything at all. In fact, you are cutting off blood 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.