Flexibility Training for Karate

I've struggled to increase my flexibility throughout my decades of karate training.

Now, I'm over 40 years old and I am MUCH more flexible than I was in high school.

However - many of my students are a long way off from doing the full splits - and the students in my club have indicated that this range of flexibility is important.

So, we've started to study the book Scientifically Stretching - and we are re-planning our class training structure so we can incorporate the sequence and intensity of training that this manual prescribes. I want to write out a rough idea of this sequence of flexibility training drills - just so it's easier for me to remember this structure when I'm teaching the next karate classes.

Start of Class:
Rotate wrists, elbows, shoulders, trunk etc,
10 minutes calesthenics to warm up the main muscle groups
3 sets of dynamic stretches
light kata to warm up to karate techniques

Class content

Warm down with a full twenty minute, detailed series of isometric stretches intended to strengthen the major leg muscle groups by contracting them strongly while at their maximum range of motion.


...over the next few weeks the Class Content section of this general karate lesson plan will be much the same... because we are on a flexibility increase phase of our training, we will be spending 8 minutes of training broken up by stretching. For example, we will do one kata five times, then stretch, do a second kata 5 times, then break for a stretch... each set of kata and stretching take 10 minutes. Between each set of kata we will put our legs up on our stretching racks in front split and side split - then we will remove our karate belts, loop our belt around one foot and hold our legs out at maximum hight to the front and side... then back to kata...

Ok - that should be enough notes for me to keep in mind the routine we will be repeating... then I am LESS likely to get side-tracked... ;-)

Shotokan Karate Blog

If you have a Shotokan Karate Blog - be sure to let me know!

I'd like to include links to anything you write about your karate training - and of course, I especially enjoy watching karate videos between classes.

One member of my small Shotokan karate club has had the great fortune of living in different countries over the past few years. Recently she was living for a few months in an asian country - and was able to train with a Shotokan dojo there. She describes the training as... Brutal. Much more physically demanding that our classes. She also says that almost all the senior belts in their club (brown and up) can do the full splits.

She is moving back to asia and will be training with that club again in a few months - and - she wants to be able to increase her flexibility and do the full splits before she returns.

So - our club is re-focusing our training time to emphasize flexibility training. To help learn what routines we should be doing, I'm going to research and develop an entirely new section of videos for Sensei's Office in MyShotokan. This new section will be dedicated to everything I can find about stretching and how to develop strong, flexible legs and hips.

Watch here for more details.

Sensei Doug