stretching

Obscure

Can anyone recommend a good site/book about stetching for martial arts?

I did taekwondo around a year ago and would like to get back to it. However, tkd needs good stretching for the old kicking and i always found it dis-heartning unable to kick properly!

Sarky

Surely the classes you're getting back into has warmup sessions with good stretching techniques?

Runfree

Im sure you should be doing stretches before your class starts. It would be very very stupid if your instructor didn't make you stretch.

It is way too easy to injure yourself.

Sarky

I think we've all been there at one time or another...

Anyway, I found this a while ago, might be useful...

http://fit4martialarts.com/martialartcondition.htm

Magic Monkey

Bryce Lane has some good info on flexibility/stretching here.

Thomas Kurz has a good book "Stretching Scientifically", but save yourself the bling-blangs and read his columns at his site.

Repli

If you're stretching on your own and not in a class be sure you warm up first or you can cause serious damage to yourself

tunney

NEVER EVER BOUNCE when stretching. Its a common mistake that people, both in sports and martial arts, make and can result in serious injury.

Magic Monkey

Yeah, it's called Ballistic Stretching, and it's a no-no. Kurz recommends in his book "Stretching Scientifically" that your type of stretching follow this order:

D ynamic
S tatic
I sometic
R elaxed

And I think after doing some dynamic stretches as a warm-up, he advocates doing some training-specific exercises, i.e. if you're going to do bench-pressing, do some press-ups or use a light (enough) weight on the bar, until you're sufficiently warmed-up.

dumb larry

Originally posted by Magic Monkey
Yeah, it's called Ballistic Stretching, and it's a no-no. Kurz recommends in his book "Stretching Scientifically" that your type of stretching follow this order:

D ynamic
S tatic
I sometic
R elaxed

I read kurz's columns on the net and used his way of stretching when I did tkd, it helped a lot with my leg flexability. Dynamic stretching does the job. I injured myself slightly a couple of times when I started though, because I was doing it wrong.

You have to bring your leg up using its own strength and keep control of it as you go up and down, don't swing it up using its momentum to get it higher.

That's probably why front leg-swing and side leg-swing are two of the first things you learn in itf tkd (but raise them with control, don't swing them up!). If you do these for a couple of minutes every day, your flexability should improve within a few weeks.

loco-colo

Is it true that you need do no other exercise than stretching? Thank You.

Sarky

Well, all round physical fitness helps an awful lot.

Stamina is quite important. It's very handy to have staying power, say for a long bout of sparring, or going through your forms/katas/whatever.

A decent warmup with some aerobic exercise will get your blood flowing, and you'll be quicker on your feet, more alert, better reflexes, that sort of thing.

tunney

As gay as it may sound, a bit of aerobics exercises are quite good for warm ups. Yuo'll probably get beaten up ***ough.

tunney

Why oh why was the word though (when miss-spelled as t h b ough) blanked?

BoB_BoT

Originally posted by tunney
Why oh why was the word though (when miss-spelled as t h b ough) blanked?

because t b h is a blanked word, take a look under feedback/suggestions under admin or search for it