Have you been working on increasing the height of your
kicks and not making much progress?
Have you been trying to get more force or speed out of
your upper body techniques and not making much progress?
One way to get more from your techniques is to break down
the issue and target improving specific muscles. For example, if you want your kicks to be
higher, you will need to work on your balance and/or flexibility. If you want to improve balance, you may need to
build strength and/or muscular endurance.
If you want more power, you will need to build strength, muscular
endurance, and/or improve your physical alignment. If you want sustain speed, you may need to
improve muscular endurance and physical alignment.
Let me provide a few very specific examples.
Higher Front Kicks
Let’s say you want to work on higher front kicks. To get higher kicks, this could be a balance
issue or a flexibility issue. Let’s look
at flexibility first. The major muscles
used to perform the dynamic aspect of the kick are the hip flexors to lift the
knee and the quadriceps to execute the kick.
Improving your flexibility in either of those two muscle groups (plus
the hamstrings that get elongated with the kick) can help improve the height of
your kicks. A couple good stretches to do
then would be forward bend and kneeling lunges with and without an added quadriceps
stretch.
Maybe you have good flexibility but still cannot get your
kicks higher. In that case, it may be a balance
issue. Some key muscles used for balance
are the calves, quadriceps and the abdominals.
You may need to build muscular strength and/or endurance for those muscles
to improve balance. Some suggestions to
strengthen the calves (which is not an exhaustive list), are calf raises or
walking on the balls of your feet. If
you want to work on strengthening your quadriceps and calves at the same time,
you can go into a deep horse stance and rise onto both balls of the feet at the
same time and hold for 5-10 second and do 10-20 repetitions at a time. Some suggestions to strengthen the quadriceps
(but not an exhaustive list), are leg presses (if enjoy lifting weights), using
resistance bands and performing knee extension while sitting, performing one or
two legged squats (one legged squats will help strengthen the claves as well).
More Powerful Knife Hand
More
powerful knife hands will come from a combination of improving your stances as well as
muscular strength in your upper body and specifically for knife hand will be
triceps and deltoids (shoulder). Some exercises to strengthen your triceps (no
weights needed), are dips and pushups.
These same exercises will also strengthen your deltoids. Other good deltoid strengthening exercises
that also strengthen your abdominals as an added bonus are forearm planks and
single arm plank. A great exercise that strengthens the shoulders, triceps, and
abdominals is pike press.
In class, given the limited time we have, we do not spend
time stretching or working on balance other than drills directly related to the
techniques we are working. Therefore, it
is up to each student to put in the extra time to stretch, work on muscular strength,
and/or endurance outside of class. For
each technique, I would recommend determining one aspect of each one you think
you could improve the most on (flexibility, balance, muscular strength, or
muscular endurance). Based on that, you
can then add specific exercise to improve in that area. I think you will be surprised how some
targeting focus can help significantly improve your martial arts techniques.
If you need some pointers in any of these areas, please
do not hesitate to ask. There are also
some good references out there such as “The Anatomy of Martial Arts” by Dr,
Norman Link and Lily Chou [Ref. 1] that provide some good insights into muscles
used and exercises to strengthen or improve flexibility for those muscles. Loren Christensen’s “Fighter’s’ Fact Book”
[Ref .2] also has some good exercises, and drills to improve various aspects of
your techniques.
Regards,
Kelly
“The more you
sweat in training, the less you will bleed in battle.”~ Unknown
References
1.
The Anatomy of
Martial Arts by Dr, Norman Link and Lily Chou
2.
Fighter’s Fact
Book by Loren W. Christensen
