Martial Arts Stretching – The Requirements of an Effective Routine
The body must first learn to perform the proper techniques at an extended range of motion comfortably and without excessive effort and strain. Flexibility, focus, and strength are the keys to graceful power needed for gaining skill in the martial arts
If you wish to make extremely rapid progress you must have a well designed martial arts stretching routine. The most effective programs consist of light morning stretching workouts, light evening stretching workouts, and intense main workouts. This may seem to be excessive, but staying with an aggressive martial arts stretching and workout program such as this will improve your flexibility in less than half the time of an easier regimen. When your flexibility has improved sufficiently, your workout regimen will become less time consuming.
When deciding what flexibility stretches to do during your morning and evening stretching workouts, you need to include active stretches, as well as methods that will loosen your muscles and joints. Strenuous passive stretches, PNF, or isometric stretching have no place here. You do not want your stomach to be full when you are stretching, so your morning regimen of flexibility stretches should take place before eating breakfast. You want the blood flow to focus on the muscles you are stretching, not on digestive activity. The evening stretching should be performed an hour or more after supper but at least an hour before bedtime. You need to do your morning and evening stretching workouts six days a week. Be sure that each workout is short, only lasting 15-30 minutes. Your main martial arts stretching routine should be a more intense workout which is completer no more than two to four times weekly. You do not want to do this workout more often than this because your body needs time to recover fully after each of these workouts. It should begin with a general warm-up which includes cardiovascular elements along with generic dynamic stretching exercises which will gradually increase in intensity to get your body loose and warm. After a general warm-up, you need to include a more specific warm-up. This warm-up needs to include movements that are similar to the movements of the particular martial art techniques you are trying to develop. Once you have completed both warm-ups, you need to move on to the main part of your martial arts stretching routine. This part needs to use modern stretching methods like isometric stretches, PNF stretches, and relaxed stretching techniques. Following this portion of the workout, static stretching and active flexibility stretches that are not so strenuous should be employed as the body cools down. The frequency of workouts, length of each main martial arts stretching workout and the time devoted to the warm-up, main routine and cool down portions will be determined by your experience and level of proficiency. If you are a beginner, you should have longer warm-up and cool down periods, accompanied by a shorter main routine. If you already have a fair level of flexibility, you can spend more time on the specific exercises and stretches in the main routine. Students who are more advanced may require only a short, rounded workout to maintain their flexibility.
Depending on the sport or art you are practicing you will want to enhance your workout with the exercises that build the necessary range of motion. Students who are new to the martial arts need to focus on flexibility exercises that are non-specific. More advanced and intermediate students may focus on more accelerated techniques including isometrics, PNF and relaxed stretching methods which target specific muscle groups relied upon by their particular style of art. Martial arts that utilize high kicks require more of a focus on stretching that addresses the legs and hips, where grappling practitioners need to improve the flexibility of their upper body and torso.
By designing your martial arts stretching routing according to your experience level and your sport or art and keeping to your planned schedule, you will reach your flexibility goals faster than you would have thought.
I invite you to use these advanced martial arts stretching methods to increase the benefit of your stretching routine by rapidly increasing your functional flexibility.
If you would like more information on martial arts stretching methods, scientific routines and advanced flexibility stretches, visit www.MartialArtsStretching.com. You can rapidly increase your flexibility to the point of easily performing full splits and mastering the high kicks and other martial art techniques in a very short amount of time.
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Tagged with: Bedtime • Blood Flow • Digestive Activity • Excessive Effort • flexibility • flexibility stretches • Graceful Power • Half The Time • Intense Workout • Joints • Less Time Consuming • martial arts • martial arts stretching • Morning And Evening • Muscles • Range Of Motion • Rapid Progress • Six Days • stretching • stretching routine • Workout Program • Workout Regimen • workouts
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