10 Karate Exercises to Train At Home

In this video, you're gonna learn 10 karate exercises that you can do at home without a training partner and without a lot of space. Make sure you watch all the way to the end for a secret bonus exercise. The first thing you need to do is a quick warmup. This is super important if you wanna avoid injuries and improve your performance. Make sure you're wearing loose fitting clothes so you can move around freely. Focus on basic mobility and flexibility because if you don't have a lot of space, big cardiovascular movements might be difficult. If you have any specific stiff spots, work extra on those. Once you're ready, let's start with the first exercise. We're gonna start with something I call bed kicks, which is exactly what it sounds like. You're gonna stand very close to a bed, lift your knee as high as possible, and then slowly extend your leg into what we call a mai geri, or a front kick. The closer to the bed you stand, the harder it is. Make sure you keep your guard up as you lock out your leg fully and then retract the leg before you put your leg down and switch. Another alternative is a side kick instead, what we call a yoko geri in Japanese. Again, the focus is on doing it slowly with proper technique. And remember to keep your guard up. The next exercise is wall punching. You're gonna be standing in a low, stable stance, either a shiko dachi or kiba dachi, depending on your style, and then punch the wall. But you're actually not gonna hit it. Instead, we're gonna focus on having perfect control and distance by hitting as close to the wall as possible. Try both high, mid-level, and low punching. The third exercise is what I call triple kicks. And just like the name implies, we're gonna be kicking three times with the same leg, low, medium, and high. See if you can gradually increase your range of motion to go higher and higher, but do it slowly so we don't have any injuries. To help with support, you're gonna be holding a chair and make sure you do the exercise on both legs. The key is to lift your knee as high as possible, just as with exercise number one. In exercise number four, you're gonna be standing on your bed on one leg only and slowly perform punches. Start by slowly extending your arm and then gradually increase the speed and power. This is super challenging for your balance because the bed is not exactly stable. You can even do different kinds of blocks and strikes, both open-handed and closed-handed. It's up to you. For exercise number five, you're gonna be needing a small towel that you're gonna place under one foot as you slowly transition into your stances. You can do this with any stance, but the point is that you maintain full control over the complete transition. Make sure you do it slowly so you don't hurt yourself. In exercise number six, you're gonna be performing a glute bridge with your hands on the bed. This is super challenging because you're also gonna be performing a front kick very slowly as high as possible. Make sure you squeeze your glutes and abs to have perfect posture. This might actually be the hardest exercise out of all these 10. Guys, I'm sweating my ass off for you. All right, let's continue. In exercise number seven, we're gonna be punching with the wall again, but this time, not against it, but alongside it, in a front stance, alternating our right and left hands. The challenge here is to not touch the wall with your elbow as they have a tendency to flare out when we lose our technique. Start slowly and then gradually increase the speed and make sure you try it on both sides. And remember, you cannot touch the wall. For the next exercise, you're gonna be performing a hook kick slowly around a corner in your house. The goal is to not see your foot as you kick it around the corner and then shuffle back into a fighting stance, what we call kamae in Japanese. If you're not super flexible, feel free to kick lower depending on your mobility, as long as you maintain proper posture and alignment. Exercise number nine is called bed hikite. Again, you're gonna be using your bed, but this time in a plank position as you quickly pull back one arm into the classic hikite position. In exercise number 10, you're gonna squat against the wall with your legs in a 90 degree angle and then perform back fists or other types of strikes to the front or to the sides. This is a real leg burner. Last but not least, a fun bonus exercise. You're gonna be using the same towel that you used before, but now you're gonna throw it in the air and then catch it with kime as fast as possible. If you can, try to do punches between the catches. My recommendation is that you do 10 reps of each. So 10 times 10, that's a hundred repetitions across a smattering of different karate exercises guaranteed to improve your skills. Train hard, good luck and have fun.