Warm Ups Cool Downs
Warm ups and cool downs in a practise session
The average martial arts club draws its members from a wide range of people and occupations. During their working day each member has been subjected to a barrage of different activities and worries, but now they are all concentrated together in the club to do the same thing.
The first thing the teacher or instructor does with them is to warm them up, but what exactly is a warm up and what purpose does it serve?
Warm Ups Cool Downs – Warm Up
First of all the title ‘warm up’ is a misnomer since what the instructor is going to do is much more than increasing the temperature of the students working muscles by a degree or so.
Indeed, if that was what warm ups were all about then the instructor could advise all of the students to wear thermal underwear, have a sauna or take a hot bath just before training! These will achieve the same result.
Probably the best part of a warm up session is psychological as it serves to focus the mind on the training session to come. This is particularly important where young students are concerned.
Typically, younger students are less disciplined, so it maybe advantageous to get them into the right frame of mind before teaching them martial techniques.
Amongst other things – the warm up will get them use to responding more promptly to the teacher’s directions.
Warm up is generally performed in the company of training partners who have probably not seen each other since the last session, yet shortly they will be exchanging techniques and relying on mutual respect to safeguard each other from injury.
A warm up together re-introduces people so there may also be a social element to be considered in play.
Instructors are sometimes invited to consider the muscles as analogous to cold sump oil, which is thick and resistant to movement. Warm the oil and it thins so that moving parts work more freely.
In the same way it is claimed that if you warm the muscles first then they will contract more powerfully because they have less internal friction to overcome.
This analogy may well hold in very low temperatures, but in a heated training hall…?
It is also said that a gradually escalating warm up prepares the body for arduous training by activating a blood ’shunt’ from the viscera to the working muscles.
This shunt will also work when you pitch straight into training, though it’s claimed that warm ups offer a more comfortable adaptation from the less active to more active state.
Again, it may be the case that these claims are based more on psychology rather than physiology – it feels better so it must be better.
It is often said that the warm up “rehearses” the muscles for the strenuous actions they will shortly be undergoing. If you accept this claim (and there is no good data to support it) then it does suggest that the best way to warm up is to use actual martial art techniques performed smoothly and gently, rather than exercises.
These techniques can gradually be made more strenuous as the students come to feel more able. In theory at least such a warm up might contribute a little to skill acquisition.
Alternatively, the instructor may isolate certain movements from martial techniques.
One physical effect that warm up does have is the way it eases aches and pains persisting from previous training sessions. These may be caused by waste products, which have accumulated in the tissues and caused irritation.
In this case a gradual increase in the power and extent of movements may prove more comfortable than using full power and reach from the outset.
The next question to consider is whether warm up is best left to each student, or whether the instructor should conduct it on a whole class basis.
Certainly the instructor will lead a warm up class consisting of mainly low grades. These students will otherwise not know what they ought to be doing and unless supervised they may not achieve the anticipated level of preparation for training.
On the other hand, different students have different levels of fitness and what is a gentle warm up to one may be an exhausting program to another.
Always bare in mind that warm up is intended to prepare students for training – not to destroy them! So the best compromise generally used is for the instructor to lead the class, but to let the students follow at their own tempo.
Classes of high grades may be left to follow their own warm up program.
Warm-up should always be related to the main activities planned for the training session and also be related to the length of the training session.
A rule of thumb might be 10 minutes in 90 minutes of practise.
Warm Ups Cool Downs – Cool Down
After a period of intensive training session the body needs time to recover and return to it’s original level of lower activity. A period of cool down at the end of a practise is considered equally important as the warm up.
The good instructor will have wound the students up to a pitch of enthusiasm with hair trigger responses and explosive action, and it makes no kind of sense to turn hyped up individuals loose on the streets without returning to a calmer state!
The instructor will conduct a set of martial art and stretching movements of gradually slowing tempo. Muscular relaxation allows increased stretching of muscles and prevents the negative effects of muscle shortening; therefore considerable improvements in flexibility can be identified.
A gradual rhythmic recovery may assist the circulatory system of the body to remove substances which are thought to contribute to muscle stiffness and soreness, symptoms which usually appear most pronounced during the second day.
Cool down should also prevent dizziness or fainting after intent exercise. Articles I’ve read indicate that when exercise stops, the blood remains temporarily in the dilated vascular bed i.e., within the working muscles.
This may cause a drop in cardiac output, which in turn brings about a drop in blood pressure in the arteries. This can lead to problems with oxygen delivery and it is this which can cause feelings of light headed and nausea.
It is more likely to occur if the person is hot and if he stops moving relatively suddenly and just stands still.
There may also be a good physiological reason for proper cool down. During periods of intense activity the muscles burn food in the absence of sufficient supplies of oxygen. This leads to a build up of lactic acid. Normally this tissue irritant is flushed from working muscles by the blood supply.
When you stop training the blood shunt mentioned earlier quickly cuts down supply to the muscles and some lactic acid might be trapped there.
This leads to those feelings of stiffness and soreness persisting after training.
The instructor reduces the possibility of this happening by using a proper cool down during which the tempo of exercises gradually decreases. Incidentally stretching exercises may be particularly effective at flushing out lactic acid, so these should be tacked on before the end of session.
Recovery from exercise is delayed by ageing and by abnormal conditions caused by stress, also by over training which leads to a loss of aerobic and muscular fitness.
Meditation is a good way to finish off a session as long as it is placed at the end of slowing physical activity. Occasionally, we just relax and close our eyes for a minute before saying goodbye to our training partners
Generally, however, in order to maintain a supple body and to build up fitness and stamina, it is the responsibility of the student to exercise on some of the nights he is not in the training area (dojo).
After all, its the martial art and it’s content that you want to learn about and pursue on the mat, not an evening of circuit-training or acrobatics!
Warm Ups Cool Downs:
Typical exercises carried out may include:
Light jogging
Push ups
Shoulder rotation and shrugging
Swallow dips
Head rotation and nodding
Sit-ups
Hip rotation
Crunches
Knee and ankle rotation
Strides
Martial art movements
Star jumps
Squats
Stretches of all body components
Malcolm Keith
Chief Instructor
Youshiki Goshinjutsu
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