Benefits of flexibility training

The core role of flexibility training has never been about showing off skills such as "being able to do the splits", but to help you reduce the risk of injury, expand the boundaries of movement, and relieve chronic physical fatigue in the three dimensions of daily activities, sports performance, and long-term health. This is the most intuitive feeling I have experienced after practicing CrossFit for 6 years and taking physical classes for 3 years.

Not long ago, I took a group course student from an Internet company, a 28-year-old product manager. How stiff was his back? Even when I bend over to tie my shoelaces, my lower back hurts. When I sit on the toilet for more than 3 minutes, my legs are so numb that I have to hold on to the wall. At first, he thought flexibility training was just something for girls to practice yoga, and he was reluctant to follow it. He followed it with 20 minutes of dynamic stretching and hip relaxation in group classes twice a week. It has only been two months. Last week, he told me that he squatted on the ground to shovel cat poop for half an hour, and his waist was not sore at all.

Some people are definitely going to argue, saying that I heard from fitness bloggers that if you are too flexible, you will lose strength. This is not completely nonsense. Existing sports medicine research does show that high-intensity static stretching for more than 30 seconds before extreme competition will reduce instantaneous explosive power by 3%-5%, which does have an impact on weightlifting and sprinting athletes who need to achieve millisecond performance. But how can we ordinary people reach that level? Most people can't even reach the standard hip and knee range of motion for squats. They rely on their waist and knees to compensate when they squat hard. Instead, they get injured all over the body. The risk of "losing strength" is nothing compared to the probability of getting injured because you are not flexible enough.

When it comes to improving sports performance, I am the best example. In the past two years, my deadlift has been stuck at 80kg. Every time I reached the middle of the lift, I felt pain in my hips and my waist always flashed. I thought it was because my core strength was not strong enough. I practiced planking for two months but it still didn't work. Later, I went to the team doctor for an evaluation and found out that the hip flexors were too tight, and the hips couldn't open at the key point of exerting force, so I had to rely on the waist muscles to pull hard. I honestly added hip flexibility training for a month, PNF (Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation) stretching three times a week and foam roller relaxation, and then tested the deadlift directly to 95kg. After that, it never went above my waist.

It was even more obvious to an amateur badminton player I took care of before. He complained of shoulder pain every time he hit the ball. When he went to take a picture, there was no organic damage. It was just that the flexibility of the rotator cuff was too poor and the angle of raising the arm was not enough. When he hit the ball, he shook his arm hard, and the muscles were stretched repeatedly and the pain was caused. After two weeks of dynamic flexibility training on the rotator cuff, he told me that he could finally use the strength of his upper back when hitting the ball, his speed was 9km/h faster than before, and his shoulders no longer hurt.

Let me talk about something that people don’t pay much attention to. Flexibility is actually linked to the speed of aging. A tracking study on elderly people over 60 years old published last year in "Sports Medicine" showed that elderly people with good hip and ankle flexibility had a 40% lower risk of falling than those with poor flexibility. You must know that falls are the number one cause of accidental injuries among the elderly. Many people are unable to walk or squat when they get old. Essentially, it is not because they are not strong enough, but because the muscles and ligaments around the joints are stiff, and the range of motion is locked.

As for which type of flexibility training to choose, there are indeed different opinions in the circle. Yoga schools prefer long-term static maintenance, saying that it can deeply relax fascia.； The fitness circle recommends dynamic stretching before exercise and PNF stretching after exercise, saying that it will have less impact on exercise performance. In fact, there is no distinction between high and low. When office workers go fishing at work, stretching their shoulders and neck and holding it for 30 seconds can also relieve soreness and swelling. ； Before running, do a few sets of leg raises and side lunges, and just move your joints. Just choose the one that suits your scenario.

Now I don’t force my students to do waist splits, nor do I need them to compare their flexibility with anyone. After all, the most practical benefit of this thing is never to take photos of the splits in the circle of friends. It is that you can squat on the ground and play with your baby for an hour without leg numbness. You can even bend down to pull the zipper when wearing boots. You can move your body however you want without those painful restrictions, so it is comfortable enough.