How to Create a Martial Arts Workout

Video Transcript

"Hi. My name is Michael Quebec. I'm here at the Heritage Gym in Union City and today's subject is how to create a martial arts workout routine. Well, martial arts, in this sense, is almost like any other physical activity for health and fitness purposes. Remember, for health and fitness your goals should be to increase endurance, your heart rate right, to increase strength, to increase flexibility and to improve coordination. So any physical discipline, for health reasons should have those four criteria. Of course, the beginning, your warm-up should have some kind of strenuous activity that gets your heart rate up, okay? I'm kind of doing this light jog in place. Obviously if I had a jumping rope I could do that. Anything that improves your cardiovascular performance. So that should always be a part of your martial arts workout. So, that's cardiovascular. That's the first criteria. Second criteria is strength. Regardless of what physical activity you do, your strength should always be another aspect to improve. In martial arts, of course, you can use weight training or your own body weight. Here's one that I like to do. I like to do a push-up and I'll demonstrate two different push-ups. First one is going to be on that wall. So from here, I've got my arms locked, one foot forward, I reach for the floor and I kick myself up on the wall, and then from here. This helps for both my shoulders and wrist strength. This is an other strength training exercise for martial arts: push-ups on the knuckles. Keeping your body tight, abs held tight, back straight. And yet another strength training exercise in martial arts, the horse stance in Chinese martial arts. Holding a squat, this will work your quadriceps, hamstrings . . . the horse stance. This works your quadriceps, your hamstrings, your calves. So again, strength training. Flexibility should always be included in the workout. I like to do seated splits, just like this. I'm pointing my toes and I just reach for one side, holding that for thirty seconds, well fifteen to thirty seconds. Other side, down the center. You need flexibility if you're going to kick to prevent injuries and to increase your range of motion and that is how to create a martial arts workout. My name is Michael Quebec. Thank you."