Types of Martial Arts Stretches

Series Summary

Exercising combined with appropriate dieting is a great way to manage your weight and maximize your flexibility. Stretching is an important part of warming-up before a good workout. Did you know that stretching is also a great way to wind-down after a workout? By stretching your muscles, you lengthen and lubricate them, giving the muscles protection from tears and other injuries. By stretching after a workout, you increase your static flexibility.

In martial arts, stretching is essential for preventing injuries and increasing flexibility. In this free video series our expert martial arts instructor will show you how to stretch and warm up before a martial arts routine. You will learn how to stretch the knees, hamstrings and groin muscles. You will also learn how to do forward bend partner stretches, hurdler stretches and the butterfly stretch. If you are participating in any sort of martial arts exercises, be sure to check out this series of free videos on stretching in order to protect your muscles and joints.

Video Transcript

"My name is William Sampson and I am with United Studios of Self Defense and we are going to do a bit on stretching and flexibility for the martial arts. There are a couple basic types of stretches and some of them are appropriate at different times. The most common stretch that most people know about are what we call static stretches, where you are just sitting in one spot, holding a stretch. And then there are more of your active, your dynamic stretches where you are doing certain kinds of motions that more accurately mimic natural things that you would do, no doubt creating flexibility and to warm your muscles up a little bit. Now generally it is a bad idea to do static stretches where you are completely cold because you are pulling on a muscle that does not really want to move that much. And usually you will be causing tearing or potential damage where the, everything is the weakest which is usually a lot of times where the muscle meets on to the bone which could be a bad idea. So basically what we are going to do is we are going to warm everyone up from the ground up. We are going to start with the ankles and then just make the way all the way up the body. And a lot of our stretches are going to be slightly in motion so that way it is not hard on the body, it is a little more natural with what you are going to be doing in martial arts anyways, and it is actually going to be elevating your body temperature just a little bit. It is usually a good idea before you switch from these active stretches that we are going to start with to the static stretches where you are sitting still, it is usually a good idea if possible to try to have at least just the tiniest bit of moisture on your forehead. So often times you can get that with doing most of these stretches that we are going to be going into in a moment. But if you don't have that, just keep repeating them or even do some jumping jacks and quick squats to continue trying to warm up a little bit. So the first thing we are going to do is to try it, is you are just going to simply take and just going to put the tip of his toe on the ground and he is going to start creating a circle with his foot, trying to just get the ankle warmed up. It just starts drawing blood down the body and getting everything down there and towards the foot. Now just switch directions, and we are just going to switch over on the other side, just keep everything going a little bit. It also starts to relax the muscle a little bit just from the rhythmic circuit of motion, and notice he switched over to the other side as he is keeping everything going there and switch. And then it kind of gets the toes warmed up and everything too. Sometimes you get these injuries in extremities, you know, just because they are, you know, they are a little bit cold, they are not stretched out, they are not warmed up. So toes can be, you know, a thing you can kind of strain a little bit or possibly ankles."