2024-07-22

Teaching my regular classes at the Ross Farnsworth - East Valley YMCA.

As a result of last weekend’s seminar, I’m going to experiment with moving deep stretches to the end of class, while keeping warm-up and mobility exercises at the beginning of class, as before. I’ve known for some time that the science supports getting greater results from deep stretching muscles that are already warm, while reducing the chance of injury from stretching and then immediately loading “cool” muscles.

Once class got started, we did all the usual drills, but with an eye towards keeping the supporting foot stable and aligned safely from a biomechanical perspective. For instance, many people rotate the supporting foot outward when executing mae-geri keage, but doing so reduces the ability to drive off that leg, reducing the power of the kick, and puts “sideways” pressure on the supporting knee, which can be unhealthy over time.

To combat this, I asked students to pretend their supporting foot is glued to the floor, then grab the floor with their toes and pull themselves forward, keeping the foot completely still. This can be difficult for people with poor ankle flexibility, so I allow students to make a shorter-than-usual front stance when working on this … then slowly increase the length of their stance as their flexibility improves.