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Ok guys…I need your advice. All this week we have been doing a lot of kicks, side, side advance, back, back advance, low round, mid round and high round (only to practice the defence). My hip joints hurt so bad I can barely walk. I am thinking that I just need to develop more flexability. Any thoughts?
It is probably a matter of more flexibility but be careful these are your hips your talking about! Some motrin for the discomfort, watch your technique during the kicks to make sure your not over stressing your hip flexors, and make sure you stretch before and after. Talk to your instructors for more suggestions, they have probably seen other folks go through this, and, above all, talk to a doc if it gets worse. Good Luck
If it is the joints, I would be really careful and watch your technique. How long have you been kicking or doing krav? Again, i think your best bet is first see a doctor and then have your instructor check out your technique. And do passive stretches after a workout not before.
Thanks guys. It is my hip flexors…not the joint. I just moved into level 2 so I think my muscles are rebeling against a motion they have never done before. I stretched last night and this morning and they feel better.
I will give the obligatory see a doctor and listen to your body comment. It is after all the best way to avoid major damage.
That being said I will point out one thing that helped me a while back. Focus on your plant leg, or non-kicking leg. Are you allowing that foot to pivot out? Letís say you are throwing a right round house kick. As you torque through the kick your left big toe should be rotating to 9ish on the imaginary clock with your target at 12ish.
If you are not doing this you are going to be putting a lot of pressure on your left knee which can cause injury. A secondary effect of this is that you begin to do funny things with your right hip to compensate for the increased pressure on your left knee. Additionally, opening up that plant leg also tends to open up your hips.
Good luck.
To prevent sore muscles in the hip/leg, you could put some ice on the affected areas right after the workout. This can help prevent soreness. If it’s another type of pain (more like an injury), just be careful next time, try to ease into it until your hips and legs get used to the new motion.
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GiantkillerPalena, it’s not an injury per se, but it can weaken the structural support of tendons/muscles/etc in your hip joints. Hip flexors are small muscles, and we don’t do much during the normal course of the day to use them in the way that they are used during kicks. My suggestion is to do a drill from my TMA days:
Grab a wall. Pull your leg up in cocked position for side kick for a 3-one-thousand count, then slowly extend it out to side kick position anywhere between your own knee height to your own belt level height, for a 5-one-thousand count, then slowly re-chamber your leg, and set it down. It’s not really a balance exercise, so I suggest putting your left hand against the wall (right hand stays up in a guard) so that balancing yourself on one leg does not become the main challenge. Do three of these per leg, three times a week. Helps all sorts of problems associated with kicking.
You guys are great!! 8)
I think it might have been my technique as well. After reading the above post I went to the bag and kicked…..low and behold….I was not pivoting enough to avoid strain on my planted foot, and thereby my hip. As my instructor says \”technique always beats power…..always\”.
See…this is the good part of the internet.
Marine and KravMDJeff – Excellent advice, I have just one minor thing to add about the technique that helped me to understand it better. Again for me, I understood the pivot better when I was told to get the heel of the plant foot towards the target (as opposed to pointing it to nine o’clock) because it’s actually more the heel that’s moving. Both are correct, just a different perspective.
Heh, my post was under the assumption you had already checked the technical points 8) But, do the drills anyway. Believe it or not, strengthening those muscles will actually help with flexibility, and they’ll make for faster, more fluid (translate: harder to see coming, and more powerful) kicks.
I second MD Jeff’s advice regarding the kick exercises. Doing those helped me out a bunch with my roundhouses and the hip flexor pains associated with them.
Some great advice here. Reminds me of my old TKD days. One thing I was told to always try and remember: be sure your toe on your planted foot is pointing away from your target for side kicks, round kicks, hook kicks, back kicks.
Yeah, Brad. It’s straight out of TKD/Tang soo do training. I make the point, though, that doing those motions for round kicks are the first half of the kicking motion. The second half is the follow through after your leg makes contact and is going on through. Otherwise it’ll only have the power of the lower leg snapping out, rather than one’s weight behind it.
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