Flexibility training tips

The most core and effective technique of flexibility training is never to rely on stretching until it hurts to the point of tears, but to "heat the body first + relax the nerve tension + active contraction resistance + low load and high frequency accumulation". These four things, the efficiency of leg stretching cannot even reach 1/3 of it.

Don't believe it, you will know if you try it for yourself. Just get up in the morning and press your legs on an empty stomach. You can press your legs to a level that cannot be reached in 5 minutes. If you run for 20 minutes and then press, you can touch your toes in 1 minute. There is also a controversial point here. Many yoga schools advocate cold-body stretching, saying that it can wake up the muscles. However, this is based on years of practice, and the muscles themselves are elastic enough. For ordinary people, cold-body deadlifts may cause soreness after two or three days, or directly strain the muscle fibers. There are still many people in the powerlifting circle who advocate only doing dynamic stretching before training and not static stretching, saying that it will lose strength. This depends on the purpose of your training - if you are going to lift heavy weights next, dynamic activation is more suitable. If you are specifically training flexibility, stretching when your body temperature is the highest after training is the most efficient. I once took care of a student who was required to take the forward bend test in the high school entrance examination. He used to get up every day and deadlift for 10 minutes. After practicing for half a month, he was still 5 centimeters short of reaching it. Later, he changed to running 3 laps every day after school before pulling, and he got a perfect score in a week.

After talking about temperature, I have to mention a pitfall that 90% of people have stepped on: when you pull, you always tense up, and the nerves are more tense than the muscles. No matter how long you pull, it will be in vain. I talked to a rehabilitation trainer on the team before, and he said that as soon as the muscle stretch sensation rises, people's instinct is to tighten the muscles to fight. The harder you press down, the more the body's self-protection mechanism is activated, which is equivalent to competing with yourself. He taught me a very useful little method: no matter which part of the body is being pulled, when you feel a slight stretch, don’t move down in a hurry, take three slow abdominal breaths, and when you exhale, feel the muscle that exerts force slowly soften. Many times after exhaling the third breath, you don’t exert any force, and the amplitude will go down on its own. There was a girl who had tight hamstrings after deadlifting, and it still hurt when she walked for two weeks. Later, she added this breathing step, and the discomfort disappeared in three days. Nowadays, there are different opinions on whether stretching should be combined with breathing. Some schools believe that you should hold your breath to maintain tension, but that is for competitive athletes to activate before competition. For ordinary people, practicing flexibility and relaxing with breathing is definitely the lowest risk and most efficient choice.

If you have been practicing for a while and want to increase your speed, you can try the method of active contraction and confrontation. Take the leg press as an example. You sit on the ground and stretch your left leg. Move your upper body forward until you feel a stretch and stop. Don't stay still at this time. Try to press down on the ground with your left leg. Just use 30% of your maximum strength. Don't fight for your life. Hold for 10 seconds and then relax. You will find that you can easily move forward two or three centimeters. This is actually the PNF stretching method that is often referred to in sports rehabilitation. However, there is a lot of controversy about this method in the industry. Some people say that it is 30% faster than ordinary static stretching. Some people say that newbies can easily get strained if they cannot control the strength. My suggestion is that if you have already had two or three months of stretching foundation and have a clear sense of your own muscle strength, you can try it. If you are just getting started, just do static exercises honestly and with breathing first. Stability is more important than speed.

There is another misunderstanding that everyone easily falls into: always thinking that by practicing intensively for two hours on a weekend, you can develop flexibility. It really didn’t work. I used to practice jiu-jitsu to open my hip. I did it for two hours on the weekend. The pain was so painful that I could stagger down the stairs. I rested for three days before I recovered. No progress was made. Later, I changed to lying on the bed and doing Butterfly Pose for 5 minutes every day before going to bed, just shaking my legs while scrolling through my phone. After two weeks, my knees were directly touching the ground. Flexibility is something that relies on muscle memory. It is better to practice for 10 minutes every day than to fight once a week. This is also the consensus in the industry. At most, professional athletes have rehabilitation therapists to follow them and will arrange intensive strengthening once or twice a week. Ordinary people really do not need to take the risk of injury.

Oh yes, there is another little popular tip. Many people cannot stretch a certain part of their muscles. In fact, it is not the problem with that muscle at all. For example, if you always feel that your shoulders are tight, and opening your shoulders does not work for a long time, it is most likely that your latissimus dorsi is too tight. You can loosen your latissimus dorsi first, and your shoulders will open immediately. ； There are also people who can't lower their waist, always thinking it's because of a stiff waist. In fact, it's mostly caused by tight hip flexors. Pressing more on the front of the thigh is much more effective than stretching the waist blindly, and it's less likely to hurt the lumbar spine.

Finally, I would like to mention casually that pain is really not a criterion for flexibility training. As long as there is a slight stretching sensation, it is enough. If the pain makes you tremble and you can't breathe, stop immediately and don't compete with yourself. We ordinary people practice flexibility just so that we can exercise without getting injured and sit and stand without getting sore. We are not trying to become contortionists or acrobats. Safety is always more important than range.