Boxing Gear Article

If You Currently Stretch Before Your Muay Thai Class You May Be Headed For Injury...Learn To Warm up The Right Way

One of my muay thai students the other day complained after class that his hamstrings were sore while we were doing the post class cool down. I asked him if he did it during the muay thai class or elsewhere. He replied that he did it during volley ball training at school.

My very next question was, "Did you stretch before volley ball training?"

He replied, "Yeah, I did. I thought you were supposed to stretch before training?"

"Do you do static style stretches here?" I asked.

"No" he said.

And that is the big secret of preventing injuries. Not doing static stretches before training.

I can hear you now mentally disagreeing with that statement and for years I thought the same way. But new studies are showing similar results that I found out through listening to people who were saying things that sounded wrong and also listening to my own body

Before I did muay thai I did lots of other sports and martial arts. I was taught, like everyone else, that to prevent injuries and increase flexibility you must stretch before and after physical activity. Only half that statement is actually true the way we in the west understand it.

When you think of stretching you think of the relaxing type stretches where you move into a position that stretches a muscle and then hold that position. You then wait for the strain in your muscle to subside then go a little further. You do this several times until a maximum range of motion is produced.

I did this for years and could do the splits quite easily but I also used to get hamstring and groin strains frequently. I would wait for the muscle to heal and then stretch even harder next time so that I wouldn't injure myself again. Guess what...I would get injured again.

This would frustrate the hell out of me because I was doing everything I was taught to do from past coaches and even people from the health industry as I have a bachelors degree in nursing. Something was not right.

One day I was talking to an old psychiatric nurse who said that in his youth there wasn't the amount of injuries that you get today. He said that professional footballers didn't have all the physiotherapists and personal doctors they have today because they simply didn't need it.

He then said something that stuck with me. He said he thought it was because of "all the stretching people did before training". He said in his day all they did to warm up was to do the things they would do in training but at a lower intensity. They would then move faster as they warmed up.

I then read a book called "Stretching Scientifically" which pretty much proved what this old guy was saying. You must go through the motions that you will be doing in your muay thai training but slower at first...then speed up. That's it. The secret of the perfect muay thai warm up.

This is how I and my students warm up in detail...

1. Joint Rotations - just rotate every joint in your body from fingers to neck, and from neck to toes. When you come across a hinge joint like the elbow just extend and flex the joint through its full range of motion.

If you have some joints that don't go through that motion straight away, keep rotating until it does. This not only gets you warm for muay thai but makes you more flexible for life. See the book "Super Joints" for the best exercises for flexible joints.

2. Light Aerobic Activity - that incorporates the same movements that you are about to do in training.

This usually means doing shadow sparring. Because muay thai has high kicks that need great flexibility you must keep them low and don't fully extend anything. Just do half punches and kicks but with full intent in your mind.

This gets the internal systems working and you will get a slight sweat up.

3. Dynamic stretching - this basically involves doing arm and leg swings in all directions in a controlled way that increases your range of movement in the muscles rather than the joints.

This is another major factor in preventing injuries because you are getting your muscles ready to be stretched at speed. Doing a static stretch where your muscles are relaxing does not prepare them for action. This type of warm up does.

You can read more on dynamic stretching in "Super Joints".

This little sequence takes a lot less time than traditional western modes of sports warm ups and is actually the type of preparation you see muay thai fighters in Thailand doing. The bottom line is, if you want to get ready for action - do a dynamic warm up. If you want to go to sleep - doing some relaxed static stretching. Muay thai is an action sport.