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Help me warm them
Morblitz
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hey guys,
I recently became a senior student (rank, not age) at my Wing Chun Kung Fu Club, and part of being a senior student is that we are encouraged/brow beaten into taking more responsibility within the club, such as taking the class through a warm up session.
While that's fine and pretty standard practice, the idea of getting in front of a bunch of people and telling them what to do is a little daunting, especially since I don't really know all that many warm up exercises that are both fun and warm-uppy. I also don't want to just copy my instructors as they all do their own thing for the warm ups, it is different for every instructor, and I want it to be different for me.
There are some core exercises that I will probably do anyway, such as our standard punching and kicking, but I am looking for ideas for other things we can do to both stretch and warm up for the class. We aren't usually too strenuous about it, we work up a bit of a sweat but we don't kill ourselves like some martial art clubs. There's 2 reasons for that, we're primarily a technique driven club and physical fitness is not the priority, and our studio is a converted office/shop type place which isn't exactly ideal for really heavy exercise.
Smallish studio picture here.
Our biggest class has been about 25 students at once which gets pretty cramped and hard to do exercises like running (we run laps around the studio when we do run), but we usually average around half that. However we are growing, and may be taking down that little wall in the right hand corner and shelves on the other side to make more room.
I'm looking to keep it fairly general and an all body thing. This isn't limited to purely exercises, I'm also interested in any warm up games that involve punching, kicking, or whatever. For example, we have one game where we walk around the room shadow punching, and try to tap people on the shoulder who aren't being aware. We also play the same game but trying to dodge something like hand pads or hackey sacks instead. I am not quite sure about games yet, because I don't know if I'm commanding enough to pull them out of it when its time to move on and they're having fun.
Another obstacle is that I have a bad back, and sometimes struggle through the warm ups when I'm the student. So I think I it's best if I don't have the students do anything that I cannot for the whole duration without keeling over. This mainly involves heavy jumping or jolting type of stuff like multiple star jumps.
I know a quite a few of you around these parts are pretty in-the-know when it comes to fitness and exercise, so I'm hoping you might have some ideas about this.
Thanks for any input guys.
I recently became a senior student (rank, not age) at my Wing Chun Kung Fu Club, and part of being a senior student is that we are encouraged/brow beaten into taking more responsibility within the club, such as taking the class through a warm up session.
While that's fine and pretty standard practice, the idea of getting in front of a bunch of people and telling them what to do is a little daunting, especially since I don't really know all that many warm up exercises that are both fun and warm-uppy. I also don't want to just copy my instructors as they all do their own thing for the warm ups, it is different for every instructor, and I want it to be different for me.
There are some core exercises that I will probably do anyway, such as our standard punching and kicking, but I am looking for ideas for other things we can do to both stretch and warm up for the class. We aren't usually too strenuous about it, we work up a bit of a sweat but we don't kill ourselves like some martial art clubs. There's 2 reasons for that, we're primarily a technique driven club and physical fitness is not the priority, and our studio is a converted office/shop type place which isn't exactly ideal for really heavy exercise.
Smallish studio picture here.
Our biggest class has been about 25 students at once which gets pretty cramped and hard to do exercises like running (we run laps around the studio when we do run), but we usually average around half that. However we are growing, and may be taking down that little wall in the right hand corner and shelves on the other side to make more room.
I'm looking to keep it fairly general and an all body thing. This isn't limited to purely exercises, I'm also interested in any warm up games that involve punching, kicking, or whatever. For example, we have one game where we walk around the room shadow punching, and try to tap people on the shoulder who aren't being aware. We also play the same game but trying to dodge something like hand pads or hackey sacks instead. I am not quite sure about games yet, because I don't know if I'm commanding enough to pull them out of it when its time to move on and they're having fun.
Another obstacle is that I have a bad back, and sometimes struggle through the warm ups when I'm the student. So I think I it's best if I don't have the students do anything that I cannot for the whole duration without keeling over. This mainly involves heavy jumping or jolting type of stuff like multiple star jumps.
I know a quite a few of you around these parts are pretty in-the-know when it comes to fitness and exercise, so I'm hoping you might have some ideas about this.
Thanks for any input guys.
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I always liked running pretty basic two person warmup drills.
A good one is the Paksao/Punch drill. Basically, one person punches and the other person blocks it with a paksao, followed by a punch, which the first person blocks with a paksao, etc... It seems like a silly drill, but it forces people to pay attention to how the punches feel. Encourage people to vary their timings so they don't just get in a rhythm, otherwise the drill isn't terribly effective.
If they're doing chisao and chigurr (seriously, I know none of these spellings are right), you can incorporate that in to a pretty thorough warmup exercise. A lot of places don't emphasize chigurr, but it's a great way to keep people moving around and engaging their legs as well as their arms. Again, this of course forces people to feel their partners movements and react accordingly.
I don't know if all of this is just basic bullshit that should be taken as routine, but those are what I remember having fun with when I got to class early and other students did too.
I like these ideas, but unfortunately I'm not exactly sure how viable they might be. Mostly because they might be a little complicated to do quickly and may take some instructing in order for people to understand the process. I am not yet an instructor and am worried about teaching people wrong, or even stepping on the instructors toes.
Getting people to break up into pairs during a warm up might be a little tricky to coordinate, especially if there's odd numbers and stuff, and warm ups in our club are mainly just 'follow the instructor'.
With that said though, I had a counter thought to what I had just typed up. Parry (paksao, I think) and punch activities are simple enough to at least have a go at if you don't fully know how to do it, and can still work well even without pairing up. In fact they are much simpler doing it alone because you don't need to worry about properly countering someone, just need to do the basic movements. If it's done in a shadow fighting sort of manner, including a step and repetition it would make a pretty alright warm up.
Thanks, I'll keep that in mind. I'll might throw in about 10-20 or so reps of it and move on to the next exercise.
Also, the exercises I'm looking to do also don't need to be limited to wing chun stuff, anything that can get you warmed up and ready to go is great.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tb6qoiGuSSk&feature=related
We start of by running then turning sideways, punching and running and heel-butt-runs.
Ussually warmup takes about 10 to 20 minutes.
Usually what we would do is some sort of cardio to get the heart a pumping.
Then neck exercises, (V shaped in front 20, left 20, right 20, controlled side to side (don't whip your hair back and forth) 20 X 2)
Shoulder rotations, (looks like you are exagerrated shrugging in circles 20 forward, 20 backward)
Arm windmills (alternate crossing elbows in front of you, kind of like that video) X 20 and then reverse X 20
Regular windmills (I think that is them, touching your alternate foot while stretched out)
Then some basic stretches like you do anywhere else.
Edited to add, if you've started learning the forms, the first one is pretty great for relaxing after warm up.
After that, beat the crap out of each other for about 40 minutes.
Medicine Ball Volleyball- Get in a circle, toss a 12 pound medicine ball back and forth at random. Some straight shots, some lobs. If you drop it, step off to the side and do 10 push ups.
Tough mudders - Get down in a pushup position and do 20 mountain climbers, move straight into 20 pushups and then straight into 20 man-makers.
Hello Dolly's - Everyone down on their back, legs lifted to 6 inches off the ground. Open and close in a scissor motion for a 25 count. Rest..repeat
Planks- everyone down in a plank position, hold that position for a minute. After a minute, you move into superman's (in the plank position, you raise the opposite limb, for instance: left arm and right leg up) you do those for 30 seconds and then for the last 30 you do plank push ups.
Six count body builders:
Of course, we always do stretching too.
Thanks everyone.
These are good, I'll probably move through all of them. Though the neck exercises in the video do look a little extreme and quick, I've only ever done them slowly and gently.
The actual heart rate raising exercise I would probably do would be sustained punching and and kicking/leg raises, separately or simultaneously. Probably about 5 minutes of varying speeds of punching, and maybe 50-100 kicks per leg if separated.
And ugh. Planks. There's a fine example of things I'm concerned about having students do when I can barely do them myself because of my injury. I do like them, though. They're good for my back, and I'm debating whether or not to include them in my warm up set. We have 2 instructors that do them, with different ways, one has us hold them for at least a minute, unless he loses track of time, the other does it in multiple sets of 10 seconds.
We did the superman with a raised limb once, and I almost died. True story.
I cannot hold planks for the minute or more time length. The the multiple but shorter sets I can do alright and might end up throwing that in there because its good stuff.
Same problem with body builders and the tough mudder exercises. Mainly with the springing up and down and pushup parts. I quite like them, though. I'll see how I can handle them myself first, though they do concern me a little bit and it would have to depend on whether I felt like I could physically do them on the day of the class. How many do you think a class that doesn't exactly prioritise fitness should do? 5 body builders and mudders (on top of everything else mentioned in the thread)?
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Make sure its a fairly fast count.
We tend to do about 20-25 minutes of warm up. That includes stretching. It's more than most, but we're a really physical studio and if you're not properly warmed up or stretched out people are going to get hurt. We find that it works for us.
As for how many? That video of the tough mudders is all that we do for those. One set. Of course, that one set includes three things 20 times, but that's about all it takes. Pretty quick and you just encourage people to go at their own pace. If they need to scale it back to 15 each and then work up to 20, by all means. Do what you can, but give it your all.
The 5-count body builders? I hate 'em. My knees begin to scream after a few of those, so I usually do about 5 before I take a step back. The video is from the kids class. Why? Because in the adult class we usually opt to NOT do them.
Of course, we also do kicking drills, knees, punches, overwhelm drills, etc...
One thing that is fairly low impact is a bunch of resistance stuff. Have everyone grab a partner and get them to stand in a left to left fighting position in front of each other. One is going to slowly push through a punch while the other has his hand on the punching fist trying to slow it down..offer resistance and such. Do ten, switch sides.
Then have one stand behind the other. Guy in front raises his arms out from his side to make a T while the guy in back offers resistance my holding the guy's wrists. Don't make it impossible for the other person, but make them work for it.
We have a few more like that, but it's a bit tough to explain and I don't think we've filmed it...simply because it's not all that exciting.