An adult man gets into an argument with a school kid who happens to know Taekwondo. There’s some shoving back and forth before one of them goes down and doesn’t get back up.

Taekwondo is a Korean martial art with a heavy emphasis on kicks. Taekwondo was developed during the 1940s and 1950s by various Korean martial artists as a blend of the indigenous Korean fighting styles of taekkyeon, gwonbeop, and subak, with influence from foreign martial arts, such as karate and Chinese martial arts.

Most people train for flexibility by doing static stretching, ie. trying to touch their chest to their leg while sitting on the floor, or any type of variation of that. The problem with that type of stretching is it doesn’t mimic the movement that you are stretching for, namely kicking.

To remedy this you should practice dynamic stretching.

first exercise: swing straight leg to the front as high as you can. Hold your outstretched arms out in front for a target.

second exercise : swing your leg out to the side stretching the inner thigh, again having your outstretched arm held out for a target.

third exercise : looking over your right shoulder swing your right leg to the rear as high as you can, torso will be inclined forward on this stretch. (And then repeat for left side)

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IMPORTANT: warm up before doing these stretches. Many people think of stretching as warming up, it’s not. Run in place, do a stationary bike, jump rope, whatever to get a light sweat going and heart pumping a little, then perform these stretches. I do 3 sets of 10 of each stretch. Also don’t try to go too far too fast. You may throw something out you’ll want later. So progress slowly.

Then after your workout do the old fashioned static stretching as your cool down.

Another tip. When kicking, practice slowly to bring more muscle memory into the kick instead of just relying on momentum.