bLOG

Are the splits necessary for kicking high?

Dave Hedges
Jun 24
3 min read

Hi <<First Name>>

Before we get into todays question topic, I have some news for you.

I have finally got the Joint Mobility Fundamentals course done and up on davehedges.net

This is the joint mobility set that I started every class with for years in WG-Fit, taught it at workshops and seminars and have a few follow along videos available on the socials.

But I had never put out a tutorial online.

Until now.

I’ve priced it at £4.99, which is dirt cheap, but if you are on any of the training packages it, and all the online courses, is included in that membership.

Head over now and take a look: https://www.davehedges.net/onlinecourses

I will have follow up mobility courses up soon, I’m just figuring out the most sensible way to present them. I think, as the “Fundamentals” course is so clean and easy to follow, once you have it, you have the baseline for pretty much everything else.

So the next course can explore variations on each drill, an “encyclopedia” rather than a follow along.

What do you think?

Is there something in particular you’d like a course on?

Something I’ve mentioned or taught in the past that you would like a course to learn more about?

Anyhow, today's question:

“Are the splits necessary for kicking high?” - Sarah

Short answer - No.

Longer answer - still no, but developing the splits can be useful for better kicks.

So let’s define a couple of terms, Mobility and Flexibility.

Flexibility is the total range of motion a joint, or series of joints can go through

Mobility is control of that range, or strength within that range.

So you can be flexible, but if you don’t have the strength to control that range, you may not be mobile.

And you may be mobile, but relatively inflexible.

I like to think of it as a picture in a colouring book, flexibility is the lines of a drawing, and mobility is the bit you’ve coloured in.

The better you colour it in, right up to the lines, the better an athlete you may be, and you may reduce your injury risk.

Splits, as most people develop them, is pretty passive.

It is a lot of flexibility, but little strength.

When we look at gymnasts and the acrobat community, we see how they develop flexibility using a mix of strength work and more passive stretching.

The strength work may be something like a Romanian Deadlift or Jefferson Curl, with hanging leg raises to work the opposite side, while the passive may be a seated toe touch.

For splits, it’s common to see the Horse Stance being used, which can be loaded into Sumo style squats and deadlifts.

And also things like end range lift offs, which is placing the body into the shape you wish to make with support, say a kick position with the foot on a bar or held by a partner, then using muscle strength, lift the leg a bit higher and lower it back down.

You can do this with pretty much any stretch within reason. Get into the stretch position, close to but not at the limit, then contract the shortening muscle to take you into the end using strength.

You can see how a hanging leg raise is the precise opposite loading pattern of a jefferson curl, the leg lift strengthens the muscles going short, the jefferson strengthens the muscles going long.

And that thought process is why training splits can be useful to martial artist, even if they never achieve the splits.

You should end up with an increase in flexibility with the lines well and truly coloured in.

You have strength throughout the range of motion you have built, the very definition of mobility.

All you have to make sure you do is make sure that mobility knows what is expected of it and you smash the pads with kicks that are now stronger, faster, higher and more devastating!

If you enjoy reading these newsletters, then please do hit reply to both let me know and also to send in your question.

All questions sent in go onto a list for future editions.

Chat soon

Regards

Dave Hedges

www.davehedges.net

Golfers Elbow for Non Golfists

Dave Hedges
Jun 24
4 min read

Over the last few weeks I’ve had a number of folk complaining of elbow pain.

Either golfers elbow or tennis elbow.

And while I do have a few Golfists on my client roster, I’m not talking

about any of them.

Where we’re seeing this is the lifting population, not necessarily the

sporting population.

And pain that shows up on pulling movements, particularly bent arm pulling.

What do I mean by “bent arm pulling” ?

Think of rows, pull ups, cleans etc where the elbow will bend.

As opposed to deadlifts, farmers walks, hanging scap ups etc where the

arms remain straight.

And in that definition we have our first clue.

The pain occurs commonly when the elbow is bending under load, but not

when we pull with a straight arm.

Why?

I view the body as a unit. Like a bike chain is a series of links, but

works as a single unit.

If one of those links jams up, the whole chain starts jumping, you

immediately feel it.

The body isn’t a chain, but that idea illustrates an idea.

Each joint is a link

If there is a link that isn’t doing its share, then the other links will

have to work harder.

And what surrounds joints?

Muscle.

So some muscles may get overloaded beyond capacity, or may contract and

“forget” to relax again.

Result: pain in the overloaded tissues but not where the problem

actually lies.

And maybe the beginnings of a muscle imbalance, which may or may not

become an issue.

So where does all this take us?

Overly tight forearm flexors and lack of scapula movement/strength

The forearm flexors tend to tighten as we’re constantly gripping,

especially if we’re gripping in the same manner all the time, which with

bars, dumbbells and machines being nice and ergonomically thought out,

tends to be the case.

Standardised kit does bring about its own problems, which is why I’ve

never been a fan.

I like variation in kit, as it goes somewhat to prevent the development

of some training scaps, such as golfers elbow or even psychological

attachment to certain kit.

Solution:

Stretch the flexors and strengthen the extensors.

Basically work on opening the hand as much as possible.

An old school way of doing this was to place your hand flat on a table

and rest a book on the back of the fingers, then lift the book by

lifting each finger up, one at a time.

Try it, if you do, let me know how you got on.

It’s harder than it sounds!

We can also use elastic bands around the fingers and simply open the

hand against it.

For stretching, with a strength element, try to use movement to release

the overly tight tissues, which is great for warming up and cooling down

for a grip intensive session.

The key is movement, these are pulsing type movements:

Finger pulses https://vimeo.com/335697243 - 10-20 pulses then go to palm

Palm pulses https://vimeo.com/335697424 10-20 pulses

This stuff:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLksAltASjwfUcJs9uLcfajaOOuuouy06v&si=vpvyy1vhdklzXNvk

So what about the Scapula movement/strength.

Several years ago I was introduced to this idea of “Scapula Strength” or

“Straight Arm Strength” which are terms used in the gymnastics community.

As I played with it and used it with select clients, I noticed any

shoulder issues started to dissipate.

Mobility in the shoulder improved, chest tightness reduced and the

ability to demonstrate strength skyrocketed.

It could well be the missing link in many people's arsenal.

Straight arm strength is moving weight in any way that keeps the elbow

straight.

This means the tissues that cross the elbow (golfers and tennis pain

muscles) aren’t being asked to do much, but the scapula on the other

hand, well that has to do everything.

Now, our Scapula is a big ole bone with around 19 muscles that connect

to it in some way.

Muscles that go from our pelvis (the lats), to our arm (bicep, tricep,

lats, the rotator cuff muscles) , our neck, our ribs, our spine. It is

the keystone of the upper body.

Yet, most people have no awareness of their scapula, never mind realise

how important it is for strength and health purposes.

So here’s what to do.

Push ups, rows, pull ups all done with no elbow bend. Yes, the motion

will reduce to almost nothing, essentially their shoulder shrugs in

different directions.

Turkish Get ups and Windmills, movements usually seen in kettlebell

workouts and questioned by the bodybuilding community. Do a few weeks of

these and see how your shoulder feel!

Band pull aparts, ensure the elbows remain straight!

Pull in a variety of positions and directions. People love to tell me

the “best” way to do these, and that’s simply fellatio of the ego

There are 19 muscles going in 19 different directions from the scap, and

you think there’s ONE best way to do pull aparts???

And if you really want smooth moving shoulders and elbows that are

loosey goosey

Then you must breathe well, with a rib cage that expands and contracts

in all directions.

Our accessory breathing muscles are often the same that are tight in the

shoulder girdle and neck, which affect the ability of the scapula to do

its job.

Ensure you are breathing primarily with the diaphragm and only using the

accessory upper chest breathing as needed.

Being able to breath into the upper chest is essential, as is breathing

down into the diaphragm.

It’s more about ensuring the ability is there.

Energy Drains & Glide Ratio

Dave Hedges
Jun 24
4 min read

You may have noticed there was no newsletter last week and not much SocMed activity from me over the last week.

That is due to a few things going sideways and time being very short supply.

However, I think we're though that and can get back to normal service.

And with my own struggles this last few weeks, it seems right that today's newsletter deals with Jacks question, which is relevant to where I have been:

"How do you navigate training whilst sick with things such as a common cold? When can it help? When can it hinder? What are some guidelines to look out for? What are the guidelines from returning from illness?

Context:

I have 4 "larger" "things" which cause a drain on my energy:

1) work,

2) parenting,

3) study,

4) gym.

I was sick end of last week (sat-wed). So gym got bumped (and always will over the other 3) and I decided to skip my last session for the week. Then this week, being the eager beaver I thought I was right to train yesterday - maybe felt 75=80% recovered....Low and behold by yesterday evening i felt pretty run down and sick again - almost perhaps back at square one. Its not a terribly bad illness, sore throat and sinuses - just feel run down.

Interested to hear your thoughts?

Cheers Jack"

So what happened to Jack?

Why did he feel like he relapsed after just one session back?

Exercise and training will over time make you stronger and more resilient, this includes your immune system. Fitter people tend to be sick less.

However, in the post training window, our immune system can be somewhat dampened, and that can open the door to whatever pathogens you have been fighting and let them run riot once more!

Long story short, you only have a limited amount of resources available to run the body. And if you've just had a hard workout, your resources are being redirected towards replacing the gylcogen used in the muscles and liver, repairing any muscle damage and hopefully building more muscle, growing some new cells, developing some more mitochondria and so on and so forth.

So if you are coming back from illness, please start back slowly. Cut back on volume especially.

A short and intense session may be fine, but the more you let that fatigue build with volume, the harder it becomes to recover from.

And just as the body has limited resources, so do we as human animals.

So we must manage our priorities and our expectations accordingly.

Times where this management really kicks in:

Kids are currently sitting GCSE's or A-Levels or your country equivalent for 16 & 18 year olds, so priority has to go there.

Jobs/Careers, especially if new, or looking a promotion

Family, new kids are a huge drain on resources, delightful, but hard work.

Gym.

That last one can be confusing.

The gym is both a drain on resources and a potential tool for increasing resources.

It increases resources by increasing our "Glide Ratio" which is an aviation analogy I was told by my old friend Wolfgang Brolley.

Wolf was on a plane travelling somewhere when he was talking to his companion about how planes have a thing called Glide Ratio.

Essentially that is should the engines fail, for every meter of forward motion you will loose a certain amount of height.

A house brick has a very poor glide ratio, it drops significantly more than it will travel forward.

A 737, a common passenger plane has a glide ratio of 15:1, so for every 1 meter loss in altitude, it travels 15 meters forward.

If we train well, and train in conjunction with our life's demands, consistently for many years, we become like that 737.

Not only are we able to fly higher, but also for longer.

This is the resilience we want to have, the baseline we want to build that will springboard us to higher level performance should we find a challenge we want to undertake.

Or simply keep us flying along until it's time to land.

Keeping with the 737, it will need to refuel, it will need parts serviced and repaired, it needs to change the crew, clean it inside and out.

It can't just go and go.

Neither can you.

So when life throws you a curve ball and you don't have the energy to get to the gym. Don't sweat it.

Refuelling, changing the oil, pumping up the tyres, are all part of building resilience.

You'll be back up in the air soon.

Rush the service, and you may just take off too early and that is when planes crash.

So for Jack, take the foot off a little bit. Start back slower, less volume, see how you recover.

Maybe instead of 3 sessions this week, just do 2.

Then as you feel good, increase it gradually until you are back where you were, and potentially even better.

For myself, it's just a case of refuelling and organising my flight plan.

What about you?

Do you need to step back and review, or are you cruising along just fine?

Hit reply and let me know.

And please send in your questions, they get added to my list and will be covered in future emails

Regards

Dave Hedges