Building Strength and Flexibility

After my bike ride yesterday I didn’t feel like cardio exercise again, so I decided to focus on some of the other physical requirements of TKD; in this case strength and flexibility. Both of these I lack, so it’s probably a good idea to work on them.
Increasing flexibility isn’t actually difficult, as all it really requires is stretching of the muscles you might think. That statement is very wrong indeed. I find proper stretching quite challenging, because there is a high potential for injury if done incorrectly. I’ve made that experience firsthand when I pulled a muscle while stretching. The reason was of course improper warm-up and trying just that bit too hard. I’m actually always fascinated how many people start stretching without a decent warm-up, maybe having experienced where this can lead has made me more aware of this.
Anyway, I started with a slow paced 2km jog to get my blood flowing and my muscles warmed up before I started to stretch all major muscle groups (at least those I could think of, which means I probably forgot a good few of them), starting from top to bottom (i.e. my feet, not actually my bottom) I tried holding each stretch for about 30 seconds on one side before stretching the opposite side, 2 sets each side.
I should really start measuring the extents of my stretches on a regular basis to monitor my progress. That’s something to do for next week...

In terms of strength exercise I repeated the exercises from Tuesday, but with slightly lower weights and 4 sets of 12 repetitions for each exercise. I prefer switching the frequency of my exercises, even though I know it’s not the most efficient way of building strength, but otherwise I get bored too quickly and stop doing it.
Today I included some squats with added weight on my shoulders to work the legs a bit as well. I usually don’t work on my legs when I do strength exercise, but today showed me that I really should. I shall include regular leg work in my strength program from now on.