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The warm up exercises are essential to all martial arts practice. They serve the purpose of preventing muscle strain, tears and subsequent spasms and involuntary contraction and therefore pain. They should be practiced if not daily, at least 3 times a week whether you are training in martial arts or not.
Beyond the generic physical health benefits, they serve other purposes. You will note that these are not unique to this art and are combined in various ways in many other practices including yoga and Shaolin, which have much more extensively developed practices than those shown here. That stated, this is not the entire repertoire. What you see here is a convenient and abbreviated routine that people can do daily.
What may not be obvious on casual observation is how much this regimen stretches the muscles of the back (mostly paraspinals). The reasons for stretching the back are multiple. First and foremost, core musculature is under constant tension in day to day activity, and rarely is properly stretched or aligned. The consequence of this is it contributes a limitation to free and fluid movement of all the (upper), proximal to the core, muscle groups of the legs, arms and neck. Stated alternatively, if you don’t stretch your back, you can’t stretch the gluts and lateral stabilizers and hence the adductor muscles, and then, when you kick, jump and do rapid defense moves you can injure yourself and even fall because your body will jerk against it’s own resistance. The result is muscle tears, pulled and even avulsed ligaments and strain on spinal discs, which can cause serious back pain and eventually possible disability.
Theses exercises are best combined with isometric exercises of the chest, abs, shoulders and back (before any deep stretching) in order to correct poor posture.
The kicks you see here are not combative techniques. They are merely dynamic stretches, they are a precursor to static stretches and follow loosening of the back and gluts.
Not shown is the stretch of the quadriceps, which is considered an essential.