Case Study: Capoeirista With Oblique Strain

The other day during training, one of the capoeiristas in my class was sitting out of a drill that was focused on throwing round kicks (e.g. queixada, meia lua de compasso, armada) with complaints that his left side was bothering him. After speaking to him briefly about the location of his pain and the movement that triggers it, I looked at his overall quality of rotation; both in the thoracic and lumbar region. Given that I only had 2-3 minutes before our roda started, I chose not to look at his hips, but normally would have. 

I determined that he was getting less thoracic rotation to his left, which could be overstraining his obliques and other torso rotators in order to execute the round kicks. Before my mestre called us to the roda, I gave this capoeirista the traditional ‘open book’ exercise: lying on his right side, he would rotate by moving his left arm away from the floor and behind him; following his hand with his eyes. 

Let’s see how well his kicks look after consistent practice of that exercise!