Martial Artists do stretching all wrong?🤔

Every day of training Taekwondo, I have always performed a warmup beforehand.

Without Fail!

The reasoning is simple…

I want to avoid injuries and I want to kick higher!

I want to feel more comfortable wile performing martial art techniques

For many of us, stretching at the beginning is completely normal.

HOWEVER

Anyone who’s been to a gym, or had a personal training session with a trainer has been taught that stretching happens.. AT THE END!

Their reasoning is simple as well. if you stretch too much beforehand you will inevitably reduce the muscle strength and dexterity for that session, which is contrary to the point of working out in the first place!

Well, stretching in martial arts is done beforehand for one main reason:

We don’t do these unusual Martial Art techniques all the time!

For an example, Side kicks actually go against our natural anatomy!

Let’s take a look at a usual day for the average human being in the 21st century…

We sleep (usually on our back) body straight

We walk with our body upright, a forward movement

We sit at a chair with our body positioned forward

We climb stairs, another forward movement

Where is the hip focused movements? Turning kicks, hooking kicks, hooking punches, rolling techniques? etc..

These are things that only martial artists do!

Which is why we must warm up those muscle groups and parts of our bodies that we don’t usually use in this weird but awesome way!

So depending on what sport or activity we’re participating in, we could actually stretch before OR after.

Maybe Martial Artists have it right after all.. 😉

Train hard, and see you on the mats!👊