Plyo-Flex: Plyometrics and Flexibility Training for Explosive Martial Arts Kicks and Performance Sports by Marc De Bremaeker Turtle Press Washington DC PLYO-FLEX: PLYOMETRICS AND FLEXIBILITY TRAINING FOR EXPLOSIVE MARTIAL ARTS KICKS AND PERFORMANCE SPORTS. Copyright 2013 by Marc De Bremaeker No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the authors, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. For information, address Turtle Press, 500 N. Washington St #5145, Rockville MD 20849. www.turtlepress.com ISBN 978-1-938585-11-1 Warning-Disclaimer This book is designed to provide information on the techniques and skills of plyometrics, stretching, kicking and martial arts. It is not the purpose of this book to reprint all the information that is otherwise available to the author, publisher, printer or distributors, but instead to compliment, amplify and supplement other texts. You are urged to read all available material, learn as much as you wish about the subjects covered in this book and tailor the information to your individual needs. Anyone practicing the skills, exercises, drills or techniques presented in this book should be physically healthy enough to do so and have permission from a licensed physician before participating. Every effort has been made to make this book as complete and accurate as possible. However, there may be mistakes, both typographical and in content. Therefore, this text should be used only as a general guide and not as the ultimate source of information on the subjects presented here in this book on any topic, skill or subject. The purpose of this book is to provide information and entertain. The authors, publisher, printer and distributors shall neither have liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to loss or damages caused, or alleged to have been caused, directly or indirectly, by the information contained in this book. If you do not wish to be bound by the above, you may return this book to the publisher for a full refund. Please note that the publisher and author of this instructional book are NOT RESPONSIBLE in any manner whatsoever for any injury that may result from practicing the techniques and/or following the instructions given within. Physical and Martial Arts training can be dangerous, -both to you and others-, if not practiced safely. If you are in doubt as how to proceed or whether your practice is safe, consult with an accredited coach, physical trainer or a trained Martial Art teacher before beginning. Since the physical activities described maybe too strenuous in nature for some readers, it is essential that a physician be consulted prior to any type of training. Dedication This book is dedicated to my wife and life companion of thirty five years. Without her love and support, nothing would have seen the light of day. Being an athlete in her own right, she knows about hard work and long hours. Aviva Giveoni-De Bremaeker Acknowledgements Thank you to my co-author and technical adviser to this book, Roy Faige. For his unwavering support in spite of all the difficulties we had on the way, for his life-long friendship and for hours of arduous training, he should be commended. Late Sensei Sidney Shlomo Faige should be mentioned as the central pivot of my Martial Arts career. Thank you to the dedicated Martial Artists who posed for the photographs and the drawings: Roy Faige, Ziv Faige, Gil Faige, Dotan De Bremaeker, Nimrod de Bremaeker, Shay Levi, Tamir Carmi, Itay Leibovich … Special thanks to Shahar Navot, the professional illustrator and Martial artist who did all the drawings for my previous book (“Essential Book of Martial Arts Kicks”). Shahar could not participate to this work, but he should be mentioned: Everything I know about illustrating, I learned from him. Our previous collaboration has taught me so much, but I am still very far from getting close to his talent. Some of the photographs have been extracted from previous photos sessions book by gifted professional photographer Guli Cohen. Other photographs have been taken by my life partner Aviva Giveoni and by talented Grace Wong. Introduction Fighting is a well-rounded physical activity: It requires strength, speed, endurance, agility, explosiveness, flexibility, core musculature and mental qualities. No wonder it was at the core of the ancient original Olympic Games. Today’s fighter, besides his particular technical training, usually runs short and long distances, skips rope, trains with weights and weight machines, and does complementary cross training activities. This book is focused on the kicking skills of Martial Arts of all types, but it is highly relevant to all athletic activities requiring power, flexibility and explosiveness. The drills presented are simple and versatile; they generally are not Martial Arts-specific. The more specific kicking drills are variations of basic drills designed to arouse more interest with the fighter; they can be executed easily by athletes from other fields if they so wish, but they can also be disregarded with no impact on the overall system success. It has been the premise of my previous book that kicking is a superior skill to punching but requires much more training. Fans of the MMA fights like the UFC have surely noticed that knock-outs by punches come usually at the end of a series of punches, but the much rarer knock-out by kicks comes after a single well-timed technique. Whether one agrees or not, one will have to concur that effective kicking requires especially hard training. Besides the regular technical training in one’s chosen discipline, a few specific kicking training exercises have been presented in the previous volume mentioned. Those were just simple drills specific to the given technique and only given as examples. It is clear that the amount and variety of possible exercises to improve kicking skills are huge. Some more will be presented at the end of this book. Example of one of many kicking drills More examples of kicking drills Every school and training camp has its own kicking routines and drill sets to both improve the kicking techniques of the students and their general physical stamina and preparedness. Those classic training drills are well known and used, and most of them will be categorized at the end of this book, just as a reference and invitation to the reader to further research them. The well prepared kicker will train his muscles for strength, his techniques for speed and accuracy, his free-fighting for timing and positioning, his heart and lungs for stamina, and more; just like any other athlete. But, in the opinion of the author, there are two categories of exercise that are under-used for many reasons and that really can bring kicking mastery to a superior level: Plyometrics and Flexiometrics. The methodical drilling of those two categories of exercises, in tandem, do bring exceptional progress. And this is not only true for martial arts and martial arts kicks: All sportsmen can benefit from the drills presented, in spite of the fact that they are sometimes a bit specific. By doing these drills in an organized fashion, one will run faster, jump higher, develop more power and perform better, in any activity. But as two sides of the same coin, Plyometrics and Flexibility Training, must be drilled simultaneously and methodically. Plyometrics could be defined as the drilling for explosiveness. Explosiveness could be defined in turn, for sports, as a combination of power and speed. This definition makes immediately very clear how important it is for the “kicking” part of the art. The principle behind this kind of exercise is that you drill the muscle by contracting it eccentrically and then immediately, concentrically. The theory and physiology behind it is not of great importance for our purpose, but will be hinted at in the relevant chapter. Just remember that you will usually stretch the muscle before shocking it into contracting. For anybody doubting the bump in performance he can expect from serious plyometrics training, the generally agreed upon history of its development would be of interest. The Russians dominated track and field athletics in the Fifties, until the secret of their success was discovered as the training techniques of coach Yuri Verkhoshansky. Only once these techniques became generally used and refined all over the world, did the field level. Plyometrics started to be used in all sports with great success. Plyometrics are used in all sports, Basketball for example There are today many variations and denominations, like “Kinetic energy accumulation training” or “Shock training”, but the basic ideas behind the drills are the same. Some of the exercises presented will even be outside the physiological theory presented, as what is important for us is not the pure sport science, but the contribution of the drill to more explosive kicking or athletic performance. It is the author’s opinion that plyometrics are not used enough in martial arts for two basic reasons. One: plyometrics have sometimes the bad reputation of being dangerous and detrimental to the joints. To this we reply that plyometrics are a tool and it is the way it is used that will make it beneficial or detrimental. Cautious and gradual drilling will ensure no harm is done while huge progress is achieved. The other reason is probably because it does not look much like martial arts and is not sexy enough for class practice where students expect high kicks and a lot of fighting action. Jumping off boxes does not come close to the enjoyment of free fighting… This is why we have tried in this book to present as many as possible drills including kicking, whether pure plyometric or hybrid. Flexiometrics is an invented word in the spirit of Plyometrics. It should mean something like Intensive Stretching. The exercises are not new or based on any novel theory. The word comes in here to try to underline the fact that a lot of investment in stretching is required for explosive kicking, much more than what is usually done. Much too often, stretching is part of the warm-up and cool-down of training sessions, and that’s it. Although it is extremely important to stretch before and after training, this should not be considered flexibility training. The serious Martial Arts kicker should have dedicated stretching training sessions at least three times a week, session not shorter than one hour. This is the second “secret” of explosive kicking, and it should be noted that it is not limited to success in high kicking: it will give the same performance boost to medium and low kicking. “Flexiometrics” is therefore, for us, the systematic and separate work on stretching and flexibility that will benefit the kicker. A minimal amount of theory about flexibility will be presented in the relevant chapter, but it is the yoga-type work that is favored by the author. In fact, the martial artist that has the time and opportunity should cross-train with yoga for optimal results. If not, let him concentrate on the exercises presented here. Flexibility training is key for the success of the Kicking Artist Flexibility training should start as early as possible, but can be greatly improved at any age Again, the author feels that flexibility training is looked down upon because it takes away precious time from sexier martial art training, and also because most artists do not understand its importance. Flexible artists tend to believe they do not need it, and stiff ones are happy with their techniques and do believe that the time needed for some small eventual improvement is not justified. They are both wrong. It is true that flexibility improvements require time and methodical training but they will bring, much faster than thought, huge progress to kicking speed and range.