Monday Karate and stretching workout.

My wife was kind enough to force me to stretch really hard tonight!

I started with a some warm ups doing front snap kicks, then front snap kicks and back kicks and then front snap kicks, side thrust kicks and back kicks.   We normally do warm ups like those at class on Thursday and it does a good job of getting the blood flowing.

My wife made me get on the floor in to the splits and she pushed my legs apart with hers and made me hold my legs there.   After a few minutes of those, I got on one side and my son hold my leg up and then the other side.  After some more work, I took the advice that I learned last night and did 15 slow side thrust kicks with each leg.  I didn’t worry about the height and was more concerned with getting my hips mobile.  I also did 15 very slow side leg raises to try and develop more side hip strength.  All the years of heavy leg work and squats did not seem to help my lateral leg movements and luckily, last night at 2nd Kyu testing, Sensei DiPasquale mentioned that most of the issues he sees with adults who do not kick well is that they have poor leg strength and need to develop the hip and side leg muscles.  Hopefully this will help improve my kicking issues.  I did some more timed stretching and timed my bent over splits for 30 seconds and seiza for 30 seconds also since that move really hurts at the start of Thursday class.  I also measured my bent over splits at 43 inches and would like to get at least two or more inches added to that each week until I am able to do the full splits.  I finished up with 15 more slow side thrust kicks and am done for today.

I also did 15 slow side thrust kicks at lunch today and hope to do at least three sets each day going forward.