General Fitness

Video 7 of 36
2 min 23 sec
English
English
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First aid is something we would do when something goes wrong, but it's always a good idea to try and prevent things happening. For this, it's a good idea to do correct warm up before you start your martial arts and also make sure your nutrition and your hydration are correct. Now, there will be all different sorts of warm-up exercises. You don't want to go straight into something. The reason we want to do this is to avoid any muscular, tendon, or ligament type problems, where you go straight into something and then it causes the problem. Also, it's started to increase your cardiovascular side, so when you are actually doing the martial arts, you are doing at peak levels.

Correct warm-up exercise will again vary with what you are actually doing and your instructors can guide you through this, or if you are an instructor, then look at some creative ways of getting people to the right level before the lesson. Also, when it's finished, warm down exercises and cool off exercises, just to do some things just to rest the muscles or to free muscles up, so good warm up and a good break down.

As far as nutrition is concerned, this is a big, big subject. Eating correctly is something that we must do. It may be you can get more advice. Have a look at the associations, have a look at some of the medical, and also the government websites. They have got some very good information on eating correctly. And also, getting a good balanced diet for people doing different types of exercise.

The final one would be hydration. Hydration can be a big, big problem. If you don't drink enough, you are not going to feel well, so drinking water is really what we are looking at. It may well be that some of the sports you are working with, you need to have hydration powders or special drinks or special supplements. All these things are available and there's plenty of people within your centre or outside in commercial companies who can give you advice.

Just to summarise, warm up correctly, do the exercises, have a nice cool off section and a breakdown, so you can just relax the muscles, make sure you eat correctly and drink lots of water, and if you need any help with these, ask somebody.