It has been my experience in working with a number of instructors in the past, that current ideas for warm up drills and conditioning exercises, haven’t really moved on from just push ups and sit ups.
On those courses, we spent about 10 minutes on exercise for warm up, and that was to go over the ‘does anyone have any injuries’ part and how to structure a warm up into a lesson.
To be completely fair, the course instructor did say that we are not there to be fitness experts, but martial arts coaches.
Many traditional Martial arts instructors want to give their students a work out, and at the same time, the students want to be worked hard.
Educating Instructors Because of the nature of modern Martial arts, a high majority of students a start up as a means to improve their fitness, instead of just going for a run or visiting a gym.
From my experience, there is nothing on the syllabi of martial arts systems that relates to safe fitness training and exercise, apart from maybe traditional conditioning drills.
There is no real instruction on safe exercise, so all the new breed of instructors will know about warm ups and exercise is what they know from their own experience in class.
A few conditioning myths Sit ups, what do they do? Sit ups are not necessarily an effective method of core conditioning.
Crunches are actually quite and advanced exercise and rely on good coordination between the hip flexors and lower abdominals.
Following on from that, basic lower abdominal exercises can be introduced to start building dynamic stability and strength.
Whenever abdominal exercises are performed, the correct recruitment sequence is lower abdominals, obliques then upper abdominals.
Push ups, push ups and more push ups Body weight training is a brilliant method of introductory strength endurance training.
I’m a firm believer of an exerciser having to be able to carry their own weight effectively before they can increase their loads.
The problem in many martial arts classes is that they don’t generally use exercises to strengthen all patterns.
Some of the more common exercises used in sessions are push ups, squats and dips.
They are all great exercises in their own right, and when performed with good form they can be very beneficial.
More training should be provided to produce basic, safe and effective body weight routines, emphasizing the importance of technique and integrating these routines specifically with the needs of the student to practice the art safely.
More should be done to educate coaches and instructors to provide safe training routines that fit in to what they are trying to achieve with their students.
They do not have to be advanced exercise coaches, at the end of the day what they are trying to do is provide for a group.
They should have enough basic understanding of the impact that incorrect exercise methods can have on their students in the long term and they should know when they need to refer there students to an exercise professional, for specialist conditioning.
Find Coordination in your local area
