Movement and Martial Arts

Many martial arts classes feature movement staples like the push-up, squat, and pull-up.  It makes some sense.  These motions will make the students stronger, better, and presumably nudge them in the direction of being better martial artists.

I’d like to propose a more purposeful insertion of fitness movements in martial arts class.  For instance, yesterday in kids class we were working on switch step roundhouse kicks.  So I had the students do movements that involved rotating and switching their feet.  We could have done push-ups, of course, but there is no obvious connection between the push-up and the switch step roundhouse kick.  My idea then, is to keep the fitness movements in class but have them be related to whatever technique we’re working on.

To put it another way, let’s try not just squatting for the sake of having a better squat but because we are martial artists, let’s squat so we can have a better double leg takedown.