Archive for the 'Conditioning' Category

One of the reasons I got into karate as a kid was to learn how to do amazing things with my body as all things physical interested me. I liked climbing, fighting, riding a unicycle as well as hang gliding and scuba diving. Karate was just one more outlet to push my body to new heights.

I have found some activities that are not necessarily thought of as having anything to do with the martial arts but can be used to improve ones own strength, coordination and timing thereby improving your own martial art. I wrote a post on my other website (http://leananmean.com) about the fitness benefits of pole dancing here.

As you might know I try to find interesting material for this website that I can weave into karate, self-defense, conditioning, or general martial arts stories. In this post I will speak of fun conditioning exercises that one can do to help some facets of your overall martial art! I found this interesting (although a beginning foray) karate application of pole dancing.

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What do you think it takes to be a good martial artist? Do you need knock out power? Do you need a mean karate yell? How about striking fear into the hearts of thugs of the world!!!? Well maybe but have you considered some the of attributes of the softer and many will argue the important parts of the martial arts? What am I talking about? Well flexibility, agility and coordination!

Can you throw a kick 7′ high? How about do a spinning heel hook kick or how about do a triple wheel kick to the groin, stomach and face without putting your foot down? These are examples of flexibility, agility, and coordination you might need in normal karate moves.  In this post I will talk about these points as well as different emphasis’s of martial arts. One size does not fit all and luckily the martial and dance arts includes hard and soft styles that can contribute to ones fitness and fighting ability. This first video is of Namaste Yoga as seen on Fitness TV.

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One story of my martial arts career would span from one injury to the next. Seemingly injuries are part and parcel of karate, judo, boxing and any other physical sports. Do injuries have to occur? Are their best practices for warm-ups, stretches, workouts and cool-downs?

I started in karate learning how to toughen my knuckles and fingers so I could fight better. The rational was that if I deadened my blows, I could hit harder and get injured less. As I continued in karate training I came to the realization that I would not get in many fights during my lifetime so way worry about a few injuries? While this topic is important, I will focus more on the mechanics of normal workouts to see where they might be improved for martial arts. Here is a video of injury prevention for some soccer players (football for the rest of the world).

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