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Several months ago the owner of a Fitness Center told me that not many athletes who worked out there dedicated so much time to certain exercises like me. On and off he trains with different clubs and is surprised by how little attention some of them (both athletes and trainers, martial artists included) pay to warming up and stretching before the training session and relaxation afterwards.

So I decided to describe some of the exercises that I use at my dojang. Let me first tell you that it is very important to change the exercises, not only for fun or to avoid monotony, but because our body gets used to doing the same exercises very fast, because of which it is possible that athletes have sore muscles once a new set of exercises is introduced. It's also essential to demonstrate the exercises and explain what the aim is or what muscle is supposed to be stretched. After demonstrating a stretching exercise, you can ask your students whether or not they feel the stretching and where they feel it, and that way check if they are doing it right.

Here are some of the exercises you can use:

-You can line up your students on one side of the dojang. They have to do push-ups, on your mark they run to the other side, there they start doing let's say sit-ups, on your mark they run to the other side, where they do an exercise similar to push-ups, their hips are raised, the upper part of the body (with hips followed) goes downwards as if they have to crawl underneath a stick, moving upwards assuming again the start position. This exercise can be done the other way around too.

-Pair them up. (a) One student has to carry the other one on his/her back to the other side of the dojang where they change roles. (b) One student takes the legs of the other student who has to ''walk'' on his/her hands to the other side. (c) They stand facing each other; they raise their hands a little bit and grab each other's palms and push. The aim is to get your partner out of balance. It's a good way to warm-up the upper part of the body.

- Your students run round the dojang (several laps). While running they have to do different exercises. On your mark they have to:

1. turn around (360°) quickly and continue running (repeat several times),
2.jump bringing their knees up as high as possible,
3.jump turning around (360°) with their knees up,
4.squat down, stand up and continue running,
5.jump extending their hands upwards,
6.squat down and then jump high with their hands up,
7.do a push-up and continue running,
8.do 2 push-ups and continue running…

- After a good warm up, add some exercises for stomach, back (there are so many of them, and I won't be explaining them now), but you can sometimes introduce the following exercises: (a) On your mark your students have to squat down, stand up doing the ap chagi with the left leg, squat down, stand up doing the ap chagi with the right leg (repeat and change the kicks). (b) All students squat down with one leg positioned a bit forward, on your mark they stand up doing dolyo chagi with the front leg and squat down again. Change the squat position, i.e. legs, and the kicks of course. (c) Your students stand in parallel stance (naranhi sogi). On your mark the students make a long step forward with one leg, lower their hips, extend the leg, hold that position and return to parallel stance, repeat it with the other leg. When moving forward the part of the foot that touches the floor first is the heel, when going backwards to parallel stance, they push backwards with toes.
- A very good exercise to achieve additional warming up, to strengthen your muscles and improve balance is to chamber, extend and hold your leg, retract and hold, set the leg down. Start with one kick first. The students have to do ap chagi several times, when they finish they move on to yop chagi, then dolyo and then dwit chagi. On a 4 count, first one leg and then the other. After that they can do the following: they start let's say with the right leg: ap chagi, they extend and hold, retract (don't set the leg down), then extend and hold yop chagi to their right side, retract, extend and hold dolyo chagi in front of themselves, retract, extend and hold dwit chagi behind themselves, retract, set the leg down. They repeat the same with the other leg. These exercises are not easy in the beginning and believe me if you do them properly, you'll get tired and sweaty from head to toes. Make sure your students breathe properly, and pay attention to their feet, hips, upper body, hands, and eyes. They really need to focus while doing these exercises. Afterwards they can do the first part of the kick fast and the second slowly, in other words they start executing ap chagi normally but when reaching the point where the leg is extended, they hold that position for several seconds before bringing the leg back.

- If you have long sticks, cables or similar at disposal, you can position/tie them at a certain height. Chairs will also do. Some students tend to execute their kicks at the same height all the time. The body gets used to it and they fail to improve. So what you can do is set the height and the students have to extend their yop chagi, dwit chagi… above the chair or stick or whatever it is that you are using. They will have to pay attention to how they raise their legs. This can be done after several stretching exercises.

- To work on the stances in forms and forms as well, you can line up your students and pair them up. They are in two lines. Every two students don't face each other; their backs are turned against each other. So when one line of students starts doing the form to the left, the other line does it of course to the right. This way they don't copy each other, they are on their own, and they have to end where they started, which often doesn't happen if they don't pay attention. You can do the same with four students forming a quadrate. They have to end where they started. This can be used at demonstrations with good music. It looks really good especially when done by children, and it can also be done at the end of the stretching to warm up again a little bit.

- Some of these exercises that include techniques can be done after stretching, because it happens that during the stretching on the floor the students cool down, so these exercises will prepare them for the main part of the training session.

There are many other exercises, but I do hope that at least some of the above mentioned ones will come in handy. Training can be really exhausting, but everything you get in return later is definitely worth it.

 

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