Page 169 - Muay Thai Training Exercises

Post-stretching can be divided into two phases: stretching
to improve performance, and stretching at the end of the
cooling-down period to help the body regenerate and to
maintain agility.

Stretching to Improve Agility
Following the main part of the training session, you can
do a number of exercises that will improve your agility.
Start by stretching while your body is still warmed up. It
is best to concentrate on one or two groups of muscles.
How much you stretch depends on how much strain you
experienced in your training. In a club, these exercises are
frequently done with a partner.
Do the stretching exercises using the methods described
here. Athletes have a wide variety of experiences with the
e ectiveness of these exercises; test the methods and use
the one that o ers the best results for stretching while not
overexerting your body. As a matter of principle you
should not hold a stretch position for very long because it
will lead to poor blood circulation in the muscles, which
means the metabolites produced in training will not be
flushed as efficiently from the body.
After very intensive main training, you should forgo
stretching exercises to improve your performance. The
reasons for this are that the body will tend to cramp,
there is an increased risk of injury, and it will prolong the
regeneration process.

Stretching at the End of Training