I'm not a TKD guy (although I've done a little bit of it along the way), so take what I have to say with a grain of salt. However I have been teaching various arts for some decades, so hopefully I can offer some useful suggestions.
I am glad you decided to reply anyways, all suggestions are welcome. I like hearing different ways different martial artists do things from different styles and different schools. I'm here to learn anything from anyone.
The practice of stretching before the workout is old-school and is still used in many schools. Unfortunately, the science doesn't support it as an effective way to prevent injuries or improve mobility. Stretching is not a warmup. Stretching is something that works best once you are already fully warm.
That is interesting. Yeah, I've just been doing that because that's what I grew up doing.
I recommend starting class with warm-ups which take the body through comfortable range of motion, get the heart rate and breathing elevated, and ideally produce just a light sweat. Later on in class, you can take the students through mobility exercises that are relevant to the techniques you are teaching.
I will start classes with warm ups from now on.
Would "warm-up, stretch, mobility" be a better start to the class?
Is this what you meant by "later on in class?"
Would it be bad to start every class like this? (varying the mobility exercises to be relevant to the techniques we are doing that day)
To clarify a distinction that not all instructors understand - flexibility refers to the ability of the soft tissues to passively stretch. If you do the exercise where one participant sits with their legs extended and a partner pushes on their back to help them reach for their toes, that's flexibility. In contrast, mobility is the ability to move joints through a full range of motion under load, using the muscles. An example of this might be extending a slow, controlled high side kick.
I highly recommend this YouTube channel for relevant exercises:
Flexibility Maestro . Despite the name "Flexibility Maestro" his channel is really about mobility. Here are a couple of sample videos:
A much needed distinction. I'm glad you clarified this. You're example for "flexibility" is something we do every once in a while. The vast majority of the time, when we stretch, it's on our own without any partner assistance. Perhaps we need to do that more often. We have done a lot of mobility exercises, just based off of your example here. We have done exercises where we lean against a wall and through a set amount of roundhouse kicks slowly, and then do the same thing with side kicks. We did one recently where your partner stands in a horse stance and puts there arms out in a wide angle and you had to through a front piercing kick (I've also heard it called a teep kick) slowly over one arm, then turn it over and side kick slowly over the other arm without putting it down. I am interested more drills like these if anyone has any or knows where I can find some. I will also check out the resource you have provided me.
Which movements specifically are giving your injured/older students problems? If it's high kicks, I strongly advocate the practice of slow, controlled low kicks. I'd rather see a student execute a kick at knee level with perfect form and balance than a sloppy. off-balance head kick. If there are other problematic movements, then perhaps some of the folks here can offer appropriate modifications.
the 2 people who are injured have issues with turning their hips over. One of them hasn't been able to get their hip checked out, for financial reasons, so we don't know exactly what is wrong. The other one is very accident prone and has injuries all over. Collar bone, hips, wrist, knees, you name it. The old guy, who really isn't THAT old in the grand scheme of things, has an issue with flexibility, mostly, but also has knee and back pain.
That point of throwing low kicks with perfect technique and form rather than a high kick that looks awful, is a great one. When I see the old guy throw kicks mid-section and get off balance, I usually think "he's doing the best he can" without realizing that starting lower with good form and then working his way up after gaining some flexibility, is a way better, and more beneficial, way of going about it. This is one of those things I should have realized WAY sooner and should have already been doing. I guess part of it is I assume he's there just to keep his body moving, so I am not as worried about perfect technique. But if in doing perfect technique, it also either helps with mobility or flexibility, or it acts as a milestone marker of flexibility and mobility, either way is a lot more beneficial than just "doing the best he can."
for the ones with hip injuries they struggle a lot with side kicks, so i usually just replace their side kicks with a front piercing/teep kick or push kick. I don't know if this is the best thing to do for them, especially without knowing exactly what is wrong. I don't know if doing things that would normally strengthen areas around the hip, hip flexors for example, would be better for them or if it would injure them more. I also don't know if the pain is even in the hip flexors or elsewhere in the hip. Even if I did know, I'm not sure there is much I can do about it, safely, because that's something a doctor and physical therapist are by far more qualified to handle than I am. I'm not sure if I am thinking about this correctly, so please correct me if I'm wrong and should be viewing this with a different lens.
Unfortunately, whether you want to teach the more common approach or the more realistic approach, you aren't going to get the necessary expertise from suggestions on this forum or even from tutorials on YouTube. You're going to have to seek out additional training, learn the techniques and tactics that you want to teach, and practice them with live resistance enough to understand the common failure points and how to address them.
Yeah this is true. I would have to learn them in person and practice them enough to really understand what is happening and why its working before I teach it. I was ready to jump head first into that one, but this is a much wiser choice.
How you do that depends a lot on what's available in your area. There might be seminars which offer some of the material you are looking for. If you can make friends with practitioners of different styles who are open to sharing ideas and information and doing situational practice, that can be very useful. As a coach, I enjoy working with people who have prior experience and showing them how they can leverage their existing skills in contexts that they aren't used to. However, that usually has to be part of a one-on-one session. I can't do it in a class of people who don't have that background.
I am not aware of any seminars that happen in my area. They would most likely be a 2-3 hour drive at the closest. My master instructor has some connections in another state that some of the
hapkido people have gone to for seminars. But I don't remember hearing anything about any TKD seminars. How would I go about looking for seminars and when and where they are happening? I would be interested in looking into that, just to see how feasible it is for me.
There is a karate school who we share a school with, and, if i recall correctly, he just recently got his 10th degree within the last couple of years. And we do share different ideas, though a lot of time I learn something and he just gets a "fun fact" that he most likely already knew. But I do enjoy learning about all different styles and the way they do things, as well as why they do them. I guess part of the reason I wanted to learn about the practical tools TKD has to offer is because I am curious about the "why" we do things. Something that was rarely ever taught to me growing up is what each technique is doing. I know the applications of a couple techniques in a couple of the forms, but a lot of them I have no clue. I've never really like forms, I just did them because it was part of TKD. And if I am doing them, might as well do them properly. I would much rather kick and move, either on the bags or during sparring. But I feel like learning the practicality of each technique would make them that much more interesting to me.
Someone shared with me a book on here that I am absolutely going to get, once I have to means to do so, that talks about the practicality of the taegeuk forms. That is something I am very interested in learning about.
