Much of what we do in Kung Fu requires flexibility.
Flexibility: the quality of bending easily without breaking.
For example, my horse stance is getting easier now that I can open the hips more and bend my ankles more. My kicks are ever so slowly getting higher.
Knowing that the requirements for black belt require a certain amount of flexibility to earn your black belt, and improvements similar to those already mentioned, I have been working on becoming more flexible. In my search for ideas on how to do this, because everything I've ever tried in the past never worked. I came across the idea that Mobility was more important than Flexibility. I hadn't really thought of this before (one of those "duh!" moments. Why do I have so many?).
You see, mobility includes flexibility in it.
Mobility: the ability to move or be moved freely and easily.
Thus, you could be very flexible, but not very strong, especially at the extremes of your flexibility. Flexibility is more of a passive thing. Whereas mobility includes the passive but is also an active thing. However, with mobility you are not just flexible you also have, at least some, strength AND the ability to stretch. The idea is that if you are strong, even at the extremes of where you can stretch to, then you are also less likely to get injured.
To use the examples above, my horse stance isn't better just because I'm becoming more flexible. It is also better because my muscles have gotten stronger. I'm not JUST struggling to hold a horse stance (though 5 minutes is still out of the question) I'm now able to spring out of it quicker and easier because I have more strength. I have more mobility. Same thing goes for kicks.
Increased mobility is now what I strive for. For example, now I don't just try to stretch my Achilles tendons so that I can get deeper stances, I also do calf raises so that I can build the muscle strength to spring out of those deeper bends more easily, and safely.
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