foreverwhitebelt

Actually the night before it started happening I was running kind of late so I did my stretches without warming up first That's probably the reason why. But thanks for telling me about the daily dozen I found it on google.

I used to do Japanese Karate but I moved in late July and there aren't any karate dojo's in the area. I've looked around and I decided out of what was available I would really like to learn Taekwondo. I really like that the stances aren't super low and it has a lot more kicks. Where I live the dojang I want to go to only takes in new students during certain times of teh month so I won't be able to go for another couple of weeks. I already have pretty good flexibility for a guy- when I do the splits I'm about six inches from the floor and that's pretty much my natural flexibility. But I know Taekwondo has a lot of high kicks (where my old karate style didn't) and wanted to get better flexibility. Over the last week I've been doing stretches like the splits, chinese splits, reaching for the toes .etc and holding them for 3 sets of 30 seconds each. But for the last couple of days it feels like my tendons are really stretched/tight and it's hard to keep up this stretching routine. Am I doing too much? Does anyone practice stretching outside of class and if you do what do think I should do?

I have a couple friends who mostly practice kata and some light sparring outside class. However, the kata I know don't cover all of the kihon we practice in class and it doesn't cover all the kamae-dachi techniques we do for sport competition nor does it cover the physical conditioning With limited time to practice/condition and me being a 7th Kyu rank I was wondering what might be the best/a good way to get it all into my busy schedule. So I was wondering what do you all do to practice outside of class and how do you all make it work for you? How much time should I set aside for training outside of class- we have class for 1 hour twice a week and 1 and 1/2 hour for competition class on Saturday. I hope it's not too personal or anything just trying to make things work for myself. Thanks in advance.