Increasing my agility and flexibility

[Karate-ka19]

Alright, like the title says I'm trying to increase my agility and flexibility. I do quite a bit of ground fighting and flexibility is nice to have. Plus, Agility is always nice when stand up fighting. Anybody got any good ideas on workouts?

[EmptyneSs]

for flexibilty all u can do is stretch on a regular basis, or take yoga mabye.

for agility, skipping rope will help, thats why kickboxers and boxers do it, plus it gets u in shape.

[Broadsword2004]

Not true totally, flexibility is about strength a lot too. You cannot expect to do full splits safely if you are weak. Only strong people do full splits. Gymnasts, ballet dancers, professional acrobats, professional martial artists (from UFC to Olympic Tae Kwon Do), to even professional bodybuilders, are the ones who do splits nicely. Weak martial artists and average people who don't train and are thus weak cannot do them, or when they try, they have a hard time. So get strong. Get strong legs.

One thing to remember when stretching for like a full split is as your legs stretch further and further, your brain basically reasons, "Holy crap, the legs are forcfully coming apart, and exposing my groin, so I need to resist this!" Thus your brain literally initiates signals to tighten up your leg muscles. And it is rightful in doing so. If it didn't, then let's say you were on an ice rink and your legs split outwards, in a front split. If your brain didn't intervene, your groin would go and smack right into the ice. The problem is if you fall wrong, the brain's intervening causes damage to the leg muscles because they are forced apart into the split position while tightened, and since they are weak, you get a tear and injury thus.

But when you have strong legs, and keep stretching, your brain then starts reasoning, "Okay, my legs are nice and strong, so the groin won't smack into the ground or anything. I have control." Thus the brain relaxes and lets the leg muscles open up, since they are nice and strong. That is why professional people who can do splits can lower themselves into the split with their own leg strength and then rise back up to standing with no external aid. Because they can control their descent into the split with their legs. Thus their brain no longer worries about like the ice-rink situation, because it knows if the legs start to slip outwards into a front split position, that they are nice and strong and that if you want to stop the descent, you can easily.

Also, when stretching for a front split (where each leg goes out to the side), stick your butt way out if your toes are pointing forward. If your toes are pointing to the sky, then you're fine, but if they point forward, your entire leg rotates forward with your foot. This causes the hip and thigh bone to jam into each other. Thus, you must "rotate" your pelvis forward with your thighs to allow you to slide fully into the split (provided your muscles let you). This rotation of the pelvis is basically sticking your butt way out. It may take some time to develop this hip flexibility though. You may stick your butt out and still find that your hips and thighs feel like they're jamming into each other. Just keep working at it. A very good exercise is to stand in horse stance with your butt stuck out. That sounds hilarious and is improper form in some martial arts for horse stance, but that is how it is for the split. You then work to lower and lower horse stances and wider and wider ones. Eventually, you should have your horse stance so wide your groin is 5 inches above the floor. At this point, once you can hold this position for a steady 5 minutes, you should be capable of a full Chinese split. Some people don't have this hip-thigh thing, especially young children, whose bones aren't fully developed, and they can make the split easy. But I've seen 7 year old girls straining to do the split to, so it just depends on the person. Some people are super flexible in certain areas.

Most people don't know this though and thus that is why most people can stretch and stretch and stretch and still never get full splits. For upperbody, the key is more just stretching. Do strength training to, but stretch a lot. But like don't do a hard pec workout and then stretch your pecs hard, you might pull something in them. And don't do the reverse either, a hard pec stretching followed by a hard pec workout can cause you to strain something as well. Be careful both ways.

Agility is, again, strength. Look at professional football players. Like 300 or 400 pounds of muscle yet they can run super fast. Or look at a tiger or lion. All muscle, yet they are extremely agile. FUNCTIONAL muscle is the key to agility. If you use weights, doing squats will make your legs agile in itself somewhat, but also do agility drills, like plyometrics and such. For upperbody, calisthenics, like hindu pushups, handstand pushups, planches, pullups, lever pullups, and muscle-ups, done properly in themselves will make your body strong and agile, plus stuff like boxing drills will help a lot for fighting. Or, you can do weights, and then also do the boxing drills. Just remember, do not JUST do strength training.. Calisthenics will give you more functional muscle then weights will, but it is more of a functional muscle for wrestling or acrobatics. If you do the calisthenics I mentioned and get strong and then went to a gymnastics school or wrestling school, you're set strength-wise. With weights you wouldn't be (for the gymnastics anyhow). But like for boxing, well, strength-wise, you're set for that too, but your pretty much the same as weights will provide, as you won't have the punching or striking speed. You need to do boxing and punching and striking drills. For functional punching muscle, get strong arms and a strong back and a STRONG CORE and practice punching drills properly.

Remember, strength is key to both flexibility and agility.

Do not believe those stupud mantras posted by martial art schools that will say crap like, "So-and-so art emphasizes speed and agility, but not muscular strength." I do not know what moron made up that one, since one cannot really have speed OR agility without muscular strength.

For kicking agility, work the hip flexors and abs of course, and lower back make sure that is strong, you don't want a weak lower back and strong abs or vice-versa. Also, work on your kicks individually. Do them slowly, and at full speed. Don't do air kicking with kicks that lock up the knee though too much, or you'll screw up your knees in the long run. Also, a really great exercise is to hold onto a chair and do really slow side kicks.

Now, with sides kicks, to do lots of those without getting hip flexor tendonitis, also rotate you pelvis forward (ala stick your ass out) when you kick sideways. This opens up your hips WAY more, and helps in the longrun when practicing exercises involving lots of kicks.

Jumping kicks will help your agility to, like jump front kicks, especially jump-front-snap kicks. Those are like double the workout because you crouch, jump, and throw a front snap kick, then land, jump, throw another front snap kick, etc....this works on your leg agility, jumping ability, and kicking ability. Don't do jump front thrust kicks as those can hurt your knees. Be careful with flying side kicks too. And when you do the jump kicks, tuck in your non-kicking leg, or else, even if you can jump hgiher then Michael Jordan, you'll never get any real air for your kick because the non-tucked leg will drag you down too much.

Some other cool kicking exercises are like doing spinning hook kicks slowly, to work on your balance. They can be a pain at first. You'll be like, "I can't balance!!" But then you try again a few days later, and you find you are much better at it. Kick heavy bags as well.

On a final note, DO NOT DO SPINNING CRESCENT KICKS ON A HEAVY BAG. If you do that, your lower leg is smacking this big heavy object, meanwhile your knee is supporting it. Remember, that sideways stuff is what ruins football player's knees. Your knees aren't built for it. Only do spinning crescent kicks in the air or with someone holding focus pads. Doing them once in awhile on a bag might not be bad, but don't do like 100 spinning crescent kicks on a heavy bag each day, or say by to your knees. Spinning hook kicks on a heavy bag should be fine though.

Hope this helps

[Karate-ka19]

Thanks for the great reply Broadsword. Now do you have any good exercises for the lower back? You mentioned that it is a bad thing to have a weak lower back and strong abs. Well I do. I hurt my lower back pretty bad about a year ago polevaulting (damn crossbar) and it has never recovered the strength I had naturally, basically because I had ripped a large part of my muscles from where they were suppose to be. Anyway, know any good workouts for lower back.

[Broadsword2004]

Well, provided you are fully healed (if there is still any injury, CONSULT A DOCTOR FIRST OR A PROFESSIONAL SPORTS PHYSICAL EXPERT because you want to treat your back like a baby); but I mean, if you are fully healed, some good exercises for the lower back are the deadlift and reverse situps (I think that's what they're called).

The deadlift can be a little hard to explain if you have never seen it but basically you bend at the knees and stick your butt out to keep your back flat; DO NOT ROUND YOUR BACK as this can cause injury. Have a barbell on the floor in front of you. You then grasp the barbell, and re-straighten your legs, with your back flat, thus lifting up the barbell. Just let your arms hang loose while holding the bar so it stresses the lower back. Also, look forward, not down. Come all the way up to a standing upright position, then set the barbell back down to the floor, sticking your butt out again to keep your back flat and bending at the knees somewhat. You then re-lift up the barbell, rise up, then lower it again. Do like 3 sets of 8-10 repetitions. DO NOT strain your lower back however, like how you might be straining to get off those last few reps on a benchpress. If your back can't do it, let it go. Baby the back, cuz if you screw up the vertebrae, you can be messed up for life in that area.

The reverse situp needs a special equipment piece to hold your legs, but basically you sit with your feet held down on the contraption and then you bend forward at the waist, so your upper body goes towards the floor while your lower body remains parallel to the ground, since your feet are being held in place. You then raise your upper body back up, which thus uses your lower back muscles. You then lower back down again and rise back up and so forth. You can hold a weight plate to your chest to increase the resistance too.

If my descriptions are confusing, surf the web for some pictures of these exercises. The deadlift is a very popular exercise for the lower back, so I am sure there are lots of pics of it as well as training and descriptions on the web.