Back to Basics: Flexibility

Most of us could use to be a little more flexible.  And yes, I do mean this both literally and figuratively.  I find that literal flexibility does tend to encourage figurative flexibility because it teaches us to deal with the discomfort inherent in the process.  But I digress.  My wheelhouse is literal flexibility.

First, I need to explain that flexibility and mobility are related but not the same.  Flexibility is about the ability of our muscles to flex and extend.  Mobility is about how much movement is available at our joints, or in other words, it’s about bones.  Bones and muscles work together to create both movement and stability.  I’m not going to talk about mobility today, even though it is certainly a worthy topic for some future date.

 

OK:  flexibility.  I’m pretty sure that many of us have had negative experiences of stretching.  We may have had that teacher who decided we weren’t stretching enough and exerted unnecessary force to increase our stretch to an uncomfortable or even damaging degree.  We may have not been taught that discomfort and pain are not the same thing, or even that sometimes discomfort is productive.  That can make it hard to work on flexibility.

 

Others of us have the opposite problem.  Stretching feels good, so we skip it.  How can it possibly be good for us when it feels fabulous?

 

Still others have issues with making stretching a priority.  There’s already so much to do!  We need to cardio and we need to weight and now we need to stretch too?  (Yes, I just invented those verbs.  I’m a little sorry, but not much.)

 

The bottom line is this:  stretching is good and doesn’t take long and shouldn’t hurt.

 

When we stretch, consistency is key.  Doing five minutes a day is better than stretching for an hour once a month.  I’m sure we all waste more than five minutes somewhere in the day.

 

Here’s the process, using a hamstring stretch as an example.  For this particular hamstring stretch, we’re going to lie down on our backs and use a strap.  To begin, one leg will be bent with the foot flat on the floor.  The strap will be around the other foot, which will be raised off the floor.  I’m not going to specify how high because this is the part where we have to pay attention.  We’ll lift that leg gradually and we will stop when we feel tension in the hamstrings.  Notice I said tension, not pain.  Pain is actually bad for flexibility because our muscles freak out.  If we move into tension and hang out there a bit, our muscles realize that nothing bad is happening and they relax.  We can move in and out of tension gently (not bouncing, like they taught us in my youth).  We can explore different angles of attack.  Muscles have multiple fibers and small variations in position can stretch different fibers.  It’s kind of cool, really.  Once we have explored the tension, we can change the stretch by extending the bent leg along the floor.  This increases the stretch, so we may need to lower our stretching leg a little to avoid pain.  Hang out and explore again.  The whole process, on both legs, should take maybe two minutes.

 

Go play.