Flexibility is very important to all sports including karate. There are a number of very important reasons to include regular stretching into your fitness routine.

Injury prevention:

By lengthening the muscle you are decreasing the risk of tears and strains, as the muscle will be better able to cope with stresses over a larger range of movement.

Increased skill level: Your joints will be freer making it easier to focus your technique in the correct position.

Increased speed: Longer muscles means less resistance to the technique, especially for those high kicks.

Increased strength: Due to the length tension relationship, as the length of the muscle increases so to does its strength over a fuller range of motion.

Each stretch should be held for at least 30 seconds on each side. You may want to repeat the individual sequences a number of times to get the maximum benefit. The secret to getting results is consistency. If you spend half an hour, three times a week stretching, then you should begin seeing improvements very quickly. Give yourself a day to recover after a heavy stretching session to allow the muscles to grow and lengthen.