Flexibility at the Hung Sing martial arts school.

Martial arts flexibility  Flexibility is a key ingredient for martial artists at the Hung Sing school. Increased flexibility means you can throw a high kick easily and bend out of a joint lock. The great thing about martial arts is that it naturally enhances your flexibility quite dramatically. It is also important to complement your martial arts training with stretching exercises on your own, this will accelerate your gains in flexibility. In turn, increased flexibility will enhance your abilities as a martial artist as well as help you to prevent injuries.

While there are different schools of thought on stretching, the basic concept is simple. If you think of a rubber band, you can see that a short rubber band is much tighter than a long one. A tight rubber band is easier to rip. A long rubber band is flexible. The idea of stretching is to get your muscles to become long like a long rubber band. Every time you do a great stretching routine, your muscles will have microscopic tears in them; your body will then rebuild those muscles into longer muscles. Over time, your tight rubber bands will become longer ones.

Basic routine to follow:

Warm-Up 

Before undergoing any rigorous stretching exercises, it is good to warm up the body and get your blood circulating. A warm-up can consist of a jog, star jumps, press-ups, sit-ups, squats, light form practice or anything that can get your body to heat up and start sweating. By warming up the body before any rigorous stretching exercises, it will help you to minimise any chances of injury.

Dynamic Stretching

After a good warm-up, the next step is dynamic stretching. Dynamic stretching is the concept of stretching your muscles through action. For example form practice, you are stretching the specific muscles needed for the upcoming bag work, sparring or powerful form practice. Another example of dynamic stretching would be doing straight kick-up motions, swinging your leg up with your knee locked. This motion will stretch your hamstrings very well in a dynamic manner. After you undergo dynamic stretching, your body is ready to be pushed to its limit with a great workout. 

Static Stretching

Static stretching is best used after a hard workout (ie after a class invoking moving pushing hands, sparring, heavy bag-work or powerful form practice). Static stretching is the concept of stretching your muscles slowly into a position and holding it. For example, you can sit on the floor with your feet stretched out in front of you and lean over to touch your toes and hold the position. Try to hold for 30 seconds and repeat 3-5 sets. Static stretches are good as an after-workout cool down. Your body will be tired and your muscles will tend to tighten up after a class. Static stretching will help lengthen those muscles when your body’s instinct is to tighten up those muscles. 

Summary

If you want to improve your flexibility with specific drills,  ask your instructors advice, each instructor will have different drills and tricks to increasing flexibility. The most important thing is to experiment with your body and to see which stretching exercises are best suited for you. Either way, do your best to get into the habit of warming your body up and doing dynamic stretches before a hard workout. Along the same vein, be sure to end each hard workout with some static stretching.

As we age, we naturally become less flexible and this stiffness becomes a source of pain and injury. In the long run, if you have excellent flexibility, you will sustain less injuries.