Girls, middle school, posture, martial arts, and you

[sensei8]

Hmm. It looks like those are normally caused by an impact to the hip, not from a movement. I assume a female hip is just a more prominent target if a force is directed at the side of the body.

I hear what you're saying Justice. But why do all of my adult female students say, from time to time, that side kicking high hurts them in thier hips, even after a well stretching session? Many of my adult female students have no prior injuries to their hips!!

[JusticeZero]

Well, for one thing, stretching before strenuous exercise actually increases your chances of injuring the joints. The important thing before such exercise is the warm-up, but stretching before exercise counters the body's responses to protect itself from over-straining joints. Stretching should be done as a cool-down exercise instead, to stretch the muscle tissue that has been freshly torn by muscle building exercise and help it to repair itself at full length.

Second, pain in the hip can be caused by a variety of issues; a hip-pointer injury is one specific type of impact-caused injury, which looked like a violently red bruise visible on the skin.

[sensei8]

Well, for one thing, stretching before strenuous exercise actually increases your chances of injuring the joints. The important thing before such exercise is the warm-up, but stretching before exercise counters the body's responses to protect itself from over-straining joints. Stretching should be done as a cool-down exercise instead, to stretch the muscle tissue that has been freshly torn by muscle building exercise and help it to repair itself at full length.

Second, pain in the hip can be caused by a variety of issues; a hip-pointer injury is one specific type of impact-caused injury, which looked like a violently red bruise visible on the skin.

You're probably right across the board. Our stretches are no more severe than most any other karate dojo's; staple stretches. I've never had a student complain after stretching, just complaining while our adult female students are doing a high side kick with a snap but not when doing a thrust.

Now, the term "hip pointer" has come from my first adult female students, and I've dumbly continued calling 'it' that. What it should be called is beyond me but it's consistent.

Edited June 5, 2013 by sensei8

[JusticeZero]

A hip-pointer injury is a bone bruise at the top of the hip caused by an impact. What you are talking about sounds closer to hip flexor issues.

If you are doing your stretching before exercise, your students have much less defense against this type of strain, so as they pop their leg up, and they reach the end of their range of motion, their muscles do not prevent the strain from going to connective tissue, and the inertia means that it gets strained with a fast yank.

I have no idea why it would only be women reporting this. I can think of a few things that might skew the statistics slightly in that direction, but none of them should dominate to that degree.

[sensei8]

A hip-pointer injury is a bone bruise at the top of the hip caused by an impact. What you are talking about sounds closer to hip flexor issues.

If you are doing your stretching before exercise, your students have much less defense against this type of strain, so as they pop their leg up, and they reach the end of their range of motion, their muscles do not prevent the strain from going to connective tissue, and the inertia means that it gets strained with a fast yank.

I have no idea why it would only be women reporting this. I can think of a few things that might skew the statistics slightly in that direction, but none of them should dominate to that degree.

Stretches before exercises? To my mind, that's the same thing; a stretch is an exercise and vise versa.

I think that the men don't want to seem unmanly by complaining, and that's why they don't say anything, and they need to because I'm there to help them in any way that I can. Keeping it to themselves isn't a smart thing; I don't know it's broken if they don't tell me. Btw, I don't view my female students as unwomanly because they INFORM me of a problem, no, they're being proactive in their training.

[JusticeZero]

Stretches extend the muscle, and in part this is done through defeating the reflex of the muscle to tighten and pull back from the end of its reach.

Muscles have a reflex where when it gets close to its full range of motion, it tightens to pull back away to prevent injury. This is why when doing a static stretch, you wait a few seconds then can increase the stretch; the reflex is set up to stop sudden movement. If you are doing stretches first, you are trying to disable or lessen this reflex, immediately before you do a lot of movements that rapidly move lots of body mass violently at the edge of range of motion. It's like cutting your brake line before driving through an obstacle course "so you can go faster".

[sensei8]

I've stretched before any class all of my life, and I've not faced anything negative in the way that our Dai-Soke taught us. I stretch my students and myself before every class just the way I was shown; I've been stretching in this manner for 49 years with no ill effects. We/I also do a cool down stretch at the end of each class.

Again, I view an exercise as a stretch and vise versa. Sometimes my brain works goofy!!

Still, I hear what you're saying Justice, and I respect what you're saying!!

[JusticeZero]

Well, yeah, there are lots of things that we've been doing all our life that we've learned to do that the evidence is now saying is counterproductive. We haven't been examining these things very closely for all that long. But nowadays there's a lot of research going into exercise and athletics. I try to track that and keep my techniques up to date.

[bushido_man96]

I like to stretch at the end of a class, because the muscles are nice and warm. But, I have a hard time getting them to warm early on, and my kicks tend to suffer for it. I can't kick nearly as high as I used to early on in a class. I think more dynamic warmups might help with that, but I've only messed with dynamic stretching a little bit.

[JusticeZero]

As far as warmups are concerned, I find the fastest warmup I have found is slow au close to the ground, since it activates so many muscles through a moving range and is actually pretty intense upper body work that self-limits. Most warmups I see are using leg muscles at a much lower percentage of their maximum and trying to make up for it by jiggling faster. The heat is created by muscle activity, not joint activity, so you need to be doing stuff that's more intensive.

Also need to add that au is a great posture check. Don't do it staring at the floor, do it with your chin tucked and spine straight. You should be able to look someone standing in front of you at handshaking distance in the eyes while you're upside down.