Warm-up and cool-down

A solo block from a board on this site is short and specific, and it deserves a few minutes of arrival and a few minutes of leaving. Nothing here is a prescription; it is the order most rooms use, written down. If you have an injury, a condition or a question about whether something is appropriate for you, that is a question for a coach or a clinician, not for a website.

Arriving

Start with movement that raises the temperature without asking for skill: a few minutes of easy skipping, jogging round the mat, or the motion ladder study done at half speed with no attention to shape. The point is warmth, not form.

Then move the joints the session will use through their range. Hips and knees for the level change and the shots: slow squats, lunges, hip circles. Shoulders and neck for the ties and the front headlock: arm circles, shoulder rolls, gentle neck movement in every direction without loading it. Ankles and toes for anything that ends on the toes, which is the sprawl and the spin.

Finish arriving with the stance check study. Hold the stance, check it from the side camera in your head, reset it. The first study in every board on this site is a base check because a base that is not there at the start will not appear later.

Ordering the block

Skill before fatigue. The mechanics studies, where the point is to watch a shape, go first; the conditioning studies, where the point is to keep the shape while tired, go last. The four-week boards are built this way and a board you build yourself should be too. A sprawl ladder before a single leg entry teaches a tired single leg.

Leaving

Bring the heart rate down with the same easy movement that raised it. Then hold the positions the session shortened: a long lunge for the hip flexors after level changes, a gentle hamstring stretch after sprawls, the shoulders and chest opened after ties. Slow, held, not bounced. A minute or two is enough.

The last thing in every board here is the review round, and the last thing in a session should be a written note. The room notes page is one tap from the clock; the streak counter only counts sessions with something written. Write the cue that landed and the question it raised, before the shoes come off, because by the car it will be gone.

What this page is not

It is not an injury prevention programme and it does not claim to be one. It is the order of a sensible session. The people who can say what is right for your body are the coach who watches you and the clinician who examines you.

See also the equipment guide and how to use the studio.