Footwork Cardio in Remote Online Martial Arts Training

26.01.2026

Remote Online Martial Arts Training

The first hour of my teacher client from Drum Kempo Martial Arts and Fitness's Remote Online Martial Arts Training course followed this mandate: give a footwork routine. This was a break from the usual teaching consultancy work I do with progressive teacher from the Republic of Ireland and why refreshing to just concentrate on helping him maintain his own training.

This morning's work used a combination of an agility ladder and marker cones with the entire focus on Boxing.

Remote Learning with Clubb Chimera: A morning of martial arts training featuring footwork routines with agility ladders and cone exercises, highlighting a personalised online session for a Drum Kempo Martial Arts and Fitness client.

Warm-up - Prep the Body

These particular routines rely a lot on explosive power. You should be fluid with your footwork, but you will also need to be able switch direction swiftly. This means the leg muscles in particular need to be properly activated and warmed up first. An added bonus for starting with the legs, of course, is that it is a very efficient way to wake up the nervous system.

We began with the calves and ankles, using dynamic movements, loosening up and balancing. We followed this with the hamstrings using supported single stiff leg good mornings and then Indian/Hindu squats. This exercise is a mainstay of my Wrestling sessions, but is an excellent full body movement.

Integrating Techniques with Warm-up Exercises

Another trademark of my warm-ups is to ensure everything I do is relevant to the martial art being studied in the lesson. This doesn't just mean paying careful attention to the muscle groups that are put under the most amount of pressure, but also using the warm-up as an opportunity to work simple patterns of movement that increases the reppage of techniques. So, we start to shadow box and then isolate a movement to ensure full activation and range of movement is safely achieves.

With footwork being the focus, we moved on the balls of our feet in a simple bladed stance. This was performed in all directions before we switched to the pendulum step, the shift-step and then touching the floor before switching stance twice. Heel kicks and scorpion tail whips hit the quadriceps. High knees were performed in coordination with straight punching. Then we switched between full torso rotations and hooks. Next, we moved onto rolling into uppercuts, followed by ducking into shift steps with uppercut/hook combinations off the same side. Dynamic lateral reaches were interchanged with peek-a-boo style slipping. Finally, we performed arm circles and neck twists.

Ladder Drills

Using the ladder properly includes not looking directly at the rungs but keeping the eyes forward, bringing in head movement where possible and keeping the hands up.

1. Chopping forwards

2. Chopping sideways

3. Chopping backwards

4. Hopping from one foot to another

5. Icky Shuffle

6. Ali Shuffle

7. Shifting backwards and forwards whilst jabbing, using the front foot to pull in you in and the rear foot to pull you out.

Marker Cones

This part made up the bulk of the training. By positioning the cones in different formations we trained the following footwork patterns:

• Lateral movement without crossing the legs

• Step and pivot in both directions

• Pivot step and L-step

Remote Online Martial Arts Training