I am 29 year old man who is a 3rd Kup Blue belt in Taekwondo and I am looking for any tips to improve my flexability to increase the hight on my kicks. After consulting various web sites and forums it seems to me that a lot of people say that leg strength is more important than being flexable, please could someone explain this to me as I can squat over 300lb and leg press over 400lb and yet find it very difficult to kick to mid section let alone kick at head hight whilst most of the women I train with although not being very phisically strong can kick over head hight with ease. :bang:
Sounds like you have been weight training for a while. The big thing to increase you heigth is in the hip flexors, adductors, and abducors. Yes, using that little machinge the ladies are always on will help a ton. I have been doing TKD for almost 3 months now and I have gone from belt height to my head height with my kicks. Some other things to remember is to stretch every day! Groin stretches, hamstrings, butterfly stretches. I actually asked a dance instructor to show me some of the things she did for stretching. We all know that dancers are flexible! Now I my have an advantage in that I use to do gymnastics in School but hell that was years ago.
Thank you for posting a serious subject. I'm tired of the infantile nonsense dominating this forum lately. First of all take it from a man who lost years of training time from stretching injuries, attempting to kick high without developing proper flexibility is just asking to have his legs medically amputated. Warm muscles stretch better than cold muscles. Adequate warm up is essential to getting a good strech. Keeping your muscles warm maintains good stretch and avoids injury. Avoid sitting on cold objects. Use sports creams or heat pads. Stretch several times a day, even on days you are not working out. Muscles carry weight. Excess muscle slows you down and keep you from kicking high. Only develop muscles you will actually be using. Develop hard compact muscles, not soft large muscles. If the leg muscle shakes when you kick, you're not developing the right kind. This may sound silly coming from a guy on a forum but get only good advice from competent instructors, not some high school kid goofing off from homework and posting on a forum.
Leg strength is important, but it's equally important to have flexibility. You should check out this article: http://www.shaolinwolf.com/morechitrainharder/Stretching1.php It's helped me with my stretching practice.
Your kicking height is limited by a few different things. First, your technique; if you're not kicking correctly, you'll have a hard time kicking high. Second, your dynamic flexibility. Dynamic flexibility is your ability to stretch your muscles in a controlled manner without the aid of outside forces. If you lift your leg straight up in front of you without using your arms, you are stretching dynamically. Do not mix up dynamic and ballistic stretching. Dynamic is controlled and safe; ballistic is uncontrolled and unsafe. If you throw your leg up as hard as you can and use the momentum of the movement to stretch the leg farther than it normally would go, the stretch becomes ballistic. Bouncing in the splits to force yourself lower is another example of ballistic stretching. Your dynamic flexibility will generally be limited by your static passive flexibility (ability to assume a stretched position with the aid of outside forces such as a wall or the floor) and so you should try to develop both at once. For high kicks, you'll mostly want to stretch your adductors, hamstrings, and quads/hip flexors. While side splits, front splits, and martial arts splits will help with kicking high, it is certainly possible to kick high without having the splits, and it is equally possible to have the splits and be unable to kick high. This is where dynamic stretching comes in. If you develop your dynamic flexibility along with your static flexibility, you should be able to not only develop the ability to do the splits, but also to utilize your full range of motion when kicking. Here is a good flexibility guide that goes into much, much more detail, and also provides you with methods for developing static and dynamic flexibility: http://trickstutorials.com/index.php?page=content/flx3 I would personally recommend isometric stretching for developing static flexibility. Not only is it faster and more effective than relaxed stretching, but it also builds strength in stretched positions which will allow you to have better control over your legs when they are being stretched.
I don't get this "dynamic flexibility" thing. You have to have strong, flexible legs to kick high with good control and strength, but if you can do the splits you can kick high, assuming your muscles aren't completely atrophied. Also, I don't think it's possible for someone who can't do the splits on the ground to kick over the head without a warmup. Flexibility is flexibility and strength is strength. I don't really subscribe to the "two types of flexibility" theory (I know someone will say that science is against me or something, but this is just my experience from doing all kinds of stretching for about a decade). I remember back in my Karate class years ago that they would have us do "stretches" (which, imo were basically strengthening exercises) in which we would hold our legs out in the air in various kicking positions. I could always hold my legs up much higher than most because at the time I had already learned to do the splits. People with big leg muscles would remark: "I guess my legs aren't as strong as yours," and I'd say, "no, they're not as flexible." I feel like you need strength to lift and hold the leg, but the range with which you can do so is determined almost entirely by flexibility--the kind you gain by sitting on the ground stretching a lot, putting your leg on a bar and trying to slowly touch your head to your foot, etc. I don't think anyone was ever able to do a split leap who couldn't easily do splits on the ground, and I don't think anyone ever got that flexible by just doing leg swings, holding the leg up in the air and other so-called "dynamic" stretches. You have to sit there patiently and stretch your legs for a long time. Though I say I'm kind of skeptical of dynamic stretches, I do like a little bit of the kind of stretching (PNF I believe it's called) where you say, go down towards a full split and then tense your muscles a while, release, go lower, tense for several seconds again. It's a good way to gain flexibility and strength fairly quickly, but if you overdo them you can get prohibitively sore, which is counter-productive. As to how to improve flexibility, the most important thing, of course, is to stretch very often and using a large variety of exercises. Try to stretch things from different angles and in different ways and make sure you're getting all the muscle groups involved. I noticed one day, for example, that when doing a foreward bend-type stretch, although my palms could touch the ground, my lower back was hardly stretching at all. I was relying entirely on the flexibility of my hamstrings. I introduced new stretches to specifically target the lower back, which had gotten shockingly tight, and immediately saw a big improvement in front-bending flexibility. It's also important not to stretch much cold. You can always stretch much more vigorously, with better results and less chance of injury if you've done at least a brief warmup. One of the absolute best times to stretch your legs is after jogging or some kind of cardio workout, but you should always stretch any given muscle group after you exercise it, especially with weight-lifting. Stretching in a purposely hot environment (a la Bikram Yoga) can also be very beneficial. I sometimes go up to our un-airconditioned attic, which gets over 100 degrees fahrenheit in the summer to stretch. I even stretch a little while taking a hot bath. It's very good to add little mini-stretching routines at opportune times like that during the day. Also, never overdo it. If you want to increase the intensity of your stretching, hold the stretches longer or do different kinds of stretches. Never try to force yourself into a position. I was way over-zealous when I first tried to learn to do the splits and I would stretch so hard my muscles hurt for a week, ultimately slowing my progress. I'm lucky I didn't injure myself seriously. The key to quick progress is the amount of time you spend stretching on a daily basis, not trying to push the limits of your pain threshhold.
Also - everyone has a mximum height they can kick due to the particular shape of their hip joint and a few other factors. Don't push it to the point where you're damagling ligaments and stuff, just be careful - bettter to have good technique downstairs than shoddy technique upstairs. Just saying - you only get one pair of legs in this life.
What I mean is - stretch sure, It'll improve the height of your kicks, but accept the fact that you have a natural limit, and trying to force it beyond this limit can potentially be damaging.
I can. Most people who can kick straight up can kick well higher than their heads. I can't do the splits or kick straight up yet, but I'm guessing that when I can, I'll be able to kick roughly a foot above my head. My legs are naturally kind of long, but I think most people have a longer legspan than they are tall. You're right about kicking high with the splits. Like I said, being able to do the splits will help you with kicking high, but in order to maximize your potential, doing dynamic stretches is very helpful. Kicking itself is a dynamic movement, so if you never do leg lifts but do practice kicking on a regular basis, you can improve your dynamic flexibility.
Interesting you should say that. I feel my biggest limit in my legs' range of motion is my hip joint structure. When I try to do the side splits I don't feel limited by my muscles; rather, my hip joints begin to hurt as if they're physically at their limit. It almost feels as if I could only gain more hip flexibility (and kick height) by surgically shaving away socket material with a dye grinder. Which, you know, seems like a bad idea. I've seen advertisements for machines that you sit on and crank your legs out to increase flexibility; are these intended for stretching muscles, or do they provide any flexibility of the ball-and-socket hip joints themselves?
It's possible that you're aligning your hips incorrectly. When you do sidesplits, you're supposed to rotate your pelvis forward. Do you do your splits with toes pointing forward or up? If you do them with your toes pointing forward, try pointing them up. It's possible that your hip structure is simply wrong for doing the splits, and I can't really diagnose you over the internet, but there's something for you to think about.
You almost certainly are not prevented by your bones or ligaments from doing the side splits. It is just that your muscles are not flexible enough and when they reach a certain point it just feels like they couldn't possibly go any further. When you can sit in that position where you feel you can't go any further for 5 minutes without discomfort, then I'll admit it may not be physically possible for you to go further. Anyway, there's a simple test: Standing up straight, can you put your foot on a chair at a 90 degree angle with the toes facing forward? Now turn around and put the other leg on the chair. Can you do it with both legs? If so, then there are no bones or ligaments in the way of you doing a side split, just your own tight muscles.
Well naturally women are generally taller, thiner and quiet flexible, normally they kick higher or if performing a technique will do it with the greatest of ease!
Have a look at these articles. Very informative and not too technical/scientific http://www.stadion.com/column_stretch1.html Each one links through to the next. There's quite a few of them but well worth reading.
