Adult Warm Ups
Warm Ups & Stetching (10)
or all students age 5-15
1.) duck walk - butt squatted heels and walk, keep butt deeply squatted while doing duck walks, up to 20 laps around dojo no stopping
2) bear walk - on all 4s walk slowly around dojo 10 laps
3) backward crab walk - go into backward push up and slowly walk backwards around dojo . 10 laps
4) bunny hops - in a deep squat hop up and leap as far forward as you can and and in the full squat 20 reps
Running around an oval can be difficult to keep a group motivated.
What I do is take to training 4 soccer balls. Our training hall is next to some hockey grounds so I take my group out onto the grounds form them into a Primary school group and another group high school and above and both groups form a big circle and practice running and passing the balls together.
It helps with kicking and team work. We then play a short game about 5 minutes with the higher belts Red and Black versus the other belts Yellow and Blue.
Strangely enough the senior belts usually win through better cooperation.
Everybody ends up in a light sweat and the Juniors really run a lot and have a lot of fun. We then go back into the training hall ready for Taekwondo.
Lay down on your backs and spread our feet on the wall. while this goes on you have gravity to push your legs and sometimes if that doesn't work you can use ankle weights or have someone tap your legs to make them go down.
After doing this for a period of time you become pretty flexible.
This tip (if no one already knows about it) is great for a class of 10 or more (also depends on the size of the classroom.
I learned this when I was in the Army and introduced it to the higher belt class.
It is sometimes called the 'Indian Run' where the class will double time in a single file (the pace should be comfortable for everybody - a medium paced run or a jog is fine).
The objective is to have the last person in the file move quickly (sprint) to the front line and once there, the next (rear) person will do the same and so on and so forth.
Once everyone in the file has sprinted, the 'run' is finished unless the instructor calls out for another round.
The longer the file, the challenging the 'Indian Run' becomes.
Hope this one works out for you.
The person being stretched stands with their back against the wall while their leg is being lifted into the air.
The person doing the leg lifting will lift it up as far as it can go without causing too much pain.
At this level, hold for about 30 seconds then get the person being stretched to push down for about 5-10 seconds.
This should allow them to get about 2-5 inches more of a stretch.
Repeat this step twice for a total of three times, then switch legs.
This is called proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation stretching or PNF stretching.
The person holding the leg can attempt to put it on their shoulder, and eventually on the head.
Moving closer to the partner will allow them to get a higher angle for the stretch.
To warm up a class fast for a great high energy session.
- Start with general warms ups for two minutes (jacks - jog on spot.)
- one minute rest (shoulder/ back warm up)
- Hands only shadow boxing (medium pace) one minute
- one minute rest (students drop in to box splits)
- shadow kickboxing (legs no higher than waist height) one minute
- one minute rest (students perform a hamstring stretch)
- shadow kickboxing hands - feet - knee's & elbows - two minutes.
- students then take ten minutes for class stretch together
- then to rewarm do a three minute round (anything boxing - kickboxing - self defence - jacks - press ups etc.)
This is a great warm up for any class.
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