Warming up for MA....

[Adventure427]

Hey would like your opinion on warming up...

Now for weight lifting i know you may use lighter weight and gradually increase...

Now if im MA trainning how much of a warmup do you deem necessary...and what about a cooldown? I'd like to minimize it but not injure myself and still increase my flexibility....I do Nihon Goshin Aikido and 8step mantis...The aikido is low impact when i train alone for the most part, its mostly gentle blending and doing techniques in the air (mostly for form at this stage)...

When i do the mantis tho (i tend to train them seperately) i usually do hard stance training and train the strikes diligently...so i can see a longer warmup being necessary for the mantis...

For a frame of reference, for the aikido (since most of you on here are probably CMA) just imagine working your footwork at half speed (sometimes full speed, but rarely) and doing arm movements (not that fast)....its way lighter than the kung fu training since im mostly working for form (occasionally i'll go all out though)

What's your take on it? How long of a warmup do you think?

[Mr Punch]

Your warm-up seems good.

As with weights, I like to work the same things I'm going to work later in the session but with lesser intensity/power.

As for time: as long as it takes to warm-up, and feel flexible enough and fit enough to do what you want to do (sometimes it'll take more, sometimes less... sometimes I find if I'm training solo, the 'warm-up' becomes the whole session - esp in aikido-style sessions when I do a lot of koryu warm-ups).

Warm-down... sure. I like to do full stretches to warm-down, since my body is warmed-up enough to handle them without damaging my joints.

Not quite sure if you have a more specific question, but there are just a couple of my ideas at random.