The Martial Arts Yell and Fitness

November 11, 2010 admin 8 comments

: Image via Wikipedia

Hi,

So what does the martial arts yell have to do with fitness?

As it turns out, quite a bit.

If you have any martial arts experience you will know I am talking about the kiai (Japanese) or kihap (Korean).

This yell is different from an ordinary yell. A regular yell just comes from the voice and the chest.

A martial arts yell comes from your center point. This is in your abdominal area.

If comes from a forceful explosion of air from your abdomen.

Now some of you might be thinking that air goes in your lungs and your lungs are in your chest. That is true.

But the breathing muscle (diphragm) is in between your chest and your abdomen and it goes up and down.

As you inhale, your diaphragm is drawn down into your abdomen and pushes the abdomen out. This is the natural way of breathing. You can watch any baby breathe and see that it is their abdomen that expands and contracts.

As adults, we get out of this natural way and start breathing through the chest.

This is probably because a big chest is so worshipped in Western culture.

As you exhale the abdomen is contracted and forces the diaphragm up into the chest area. This forces the air out of the lungs and is your exhalation.

A martial arts yell starts from down deep in your abdomen and the abdomen is forcibly contracted. This is done as you yell and helps create a force of breathing.

The actual yell was not designed to startle or scare someone. Now it could do that, but that is a secondary benefit.

The main purpose of the yell is to help focus your whole essence and force into that action that you are doing with the yell.

If you are punching the yell come at the exact same time as contact as made with the target.

This helps focus your power at that one point in time. If is a very powerful force.

You can tap into this power at the gym or where ever you exercise. Now, you don’t have to actually yell, but you can have a more powerful breathe.

All you have to do is do what the martial artist is doing without the yell.

Focus on your breath while you are exercising.

This is one thing that has been neglected in Western culture. Hardly any emphasis is put on breathing properly while exercising.

You can tap into this extra power by learning how to inhale, hold, exhale and hold.

Start doing this sequence for just a couple of seconds for each point. As you get better, add more time.

For example, inhale for 4 seconds, hold your breath for 4 seconds, exhale for 4 seconds and hold for 4 seconds.

Put this timing in with your particular exercise and you will also add time under tension to your muscles which is a very important concept if you are trying to get stronger.

You can do this with your warmups to get used to it.

Sometimes you will want to exhale as forcibly and quickly as possible. Do this on the concentric or positive part of the exercise.

So your breathing might be, inhale 4 seconds, hold, 4 seconds, exhale 1 second, hold 4 seconds.

As you get use to doing this you will find you will become stronger and feel more powerful and focused.

This type of breathing will also affect you whole body, not just your pulmonary and cardio-vascular systems.

Try it and let me know what you think.

Thanks,

Mike Val