How To Learn Capoeira At Home 30385

How To Learn Capoeira At Home

Training Capoeira from home

We have included our best tips to keep training capoeira from home or by yourself. Most are centred on improving your strength, flexibility and technique, all without the need of another person.

If you have enough room to do a bridge and wall to practice your handstands, then you have all the room you need. If not, why not take a trip to your local park? Practising on some grass can be really therapeutic

If you're starting out, I wouldn't concern myself with complex kicks or advance moves. If no one is there to correct your form, you might learn it wrong, and ingrained habits will become harder to correct.

I'd recommend you learn the 4 basics, every Capoeirista needs, Basic Handstand, Negativa, Au and the Ginga. If you do this daily for 2 weeks, you'll have solid basics for when you start. Focusing on your handstand will also have the added bonus of helping you gain some strength required to do some of the more interesting moves later on. All you need is a wall, an optional yoga mat and bingo! one step closer to your goal of mastering capoeira.

Pro-tip, remember to practice to the beat and put on some capoeira tunes on the background. Come Roda time this will help you massively stay in step with your fellow partner.

Must Know Moves

The moves below are a list of capoeira kicks, defences and movements that every Capoeirista must know. If you want to be good at capoeira these moves form the foundation from which everything is built. Masters these and you will be able to play in any roda; Anytime and anywhere

Handstands

Being able to do a controlled handstand is key to number of complex and advance capoeira techniques. Now is a great time to perfect your handstand. Handstands are great, because if you have room to stand up you have room to do a handstand. Handstands also recruit a number of different muscles at the same time from the core to your wrists and shoulders providing an ultimate full-body work-out.

You Could try the slower pace of Capoeira Angola

If you have slightly more space in your house you could try Capoeira de Angola. This is a style of capoeira which maintains traditions from before the creation of the regional style. This is a slower style of capoeira that maintains you closer to your opponent. Capoeira Angola is characterized as being strategic, with sneaking movements. It values the traditions of malícia, malandragem and unpredictability. Not only will learning this traditional form of capoeira put you in touch with the culture and history of capoeira, it also requires you to be more controlled and balanced with your movements. Perfect for those currently indoors

Learn About Capoeira Angola

Improve your strength and flexibility

Capoeira works your whole body very well, but it is especially intense on the legs. You can get some advantage by practising squats and lunges as deeply as you can: squat right down until you're practically sitting on the floor or lunge forwards (or backwards) until your knee nearly touches the floor and come back up.

Work on Flexibility

Flexibility is just the ability to move muscles and joints through their complete range; something we lose as we age. As we sit idly (maybe due to enforced quarantine) our muscles begin to dehydrate and stiffen. Regular stretching slows this process of dehydration by stimulating the production of natural tissue lubricants.

Capoeira is perfect for this and if you're already practising capoeira, chances are you don't need us to convince you of the benefits of stretching and yet here we are. An important and often overlooked aspect of our training is our flexibility and mental wellbeing, so we compiled a list of 18 yoga moves to improve your mobility. Why not check it out and combine you Ginga with your downwards ward facing dog for the complete balanced workout.

Flow like an Animal

Animal flow movements have been inspired by (you guessed it) animals. The animal flow workout is the ground-based workout that requires zero equipment. This beastly workout like yoga has great synergy with capoeira.

Put your hands on the floor and go for a walk like a monkey, or a cat, or a crocodile. Try leaving your feet in one place and walking your hands around you in a circle. See if you can do a bridge and Play with the movements! This will get you used to moving on the floor as well as working many useful muscles.

An animal flow workout is centred around a bodyweight program focused largely around ground-based work which aims to improve mobility, stability, strength, and power. It challenges the body through multiple planes of movement. Animal flow is a great training routine that helps improve your connection with your body while building neuromuscular strength.

All you need is enough space to do a bridge and bang! You are ready to crawl like a tiger, all while your cat silently judges you for copying their moves.

ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM, practice capoeira on-line!!

Many people have gotten very creative producing memes and videos to keep us entertained during these quarantined times and that goes doubly for the capoeira community, below is a list of instructors giving educational and fun lessons via Instagram.

1. Check out the Historical African Martial Arts Association YouTube channel. Their president D'Mon Stith has been offering online classes in not only Capoeira but many other African fighting arts. He also has a YouTube channel you can learn a lot.
2. For Yoga focused content, we would highly recommend Michael Marren from england. A pro instructor offering one to one online.
3. Mestre xuxo a mma & ufc fighter, renowned for free movements is offering a great interactive classes online. Plus lots of inspiration content via his instagram channel.
4. minhoquinhois teaching an on-line Capoeira classes for his students but will open up one more class a week for anyone who would be interested in strengthening their capoeira techniques.
5. For those who want classes in spanish try Capoeira Malloca. Which are holding zoom classes online.