How to improve your flexibility and range of motion
Brad Walker | stretchcoach. com
One of the most common questions I get asked is: How do I improve my flexibility? I’ ve tried everything and no matter what I do I can’ t increase my flexibility past a certain point. Does this sound familiar? Is your flexibility stuck, and nothing you do makes any difference?
If so, don’ t panic. This is quite normal. In fact, it’ s very common with all aspects of physical fitness, not just flexibility. Athletes from all different sports often talk about reaching a“ plateau,” where one aspect of their fitness seems to get stuck.
Fortunately, there are several things you can do to increase your flexibility: even if you feel like you’ ve tried everything. Read through the 7 best tips below; they’ re guaranteed to smash through that plateau and take you to a whole new level of flexibility.
1. Injury Equals Poor Flexibility
Injuries, whether tears, sprains, strains, aches, pains, niggles, twinges, or sore spots, will quickly put a stop to your flexibility hopes and dreams.
Any time you have an injury of any kind( even one you don’ t realise you’ ve got), your body recognizes that as a weak link in the chain and will tighten the surrounding muscles. 1 This is your body’ s protective defence mechanism to prevent further damage to the injured tissues and their surrounding structures.
This is not limited to the tissues that have been injured. An injury in your back, for example, will often prevent you from improving flexibility in your hamstring or calf muscles. An injury to your hips or knees may prevent you from improving flexibility in your shoulders or upper back.
Tip # 1: Work hard to get rid of all injuries, including tears, sprains, strains, and especially aches, pains, niggles, twinges, and sore spots.
2. Mobilise and Manipulate, then Stretch
To get the best results from stretching it’ s important that the joints and associated soft tissues are prepared for the stretching they’ re about to receive. To do this use gentle mobilisation exercises and joint manipulations before stretching.
These can include traction( gentle pulling on a limb or body part to open up the joint), vibration, shaking, joint rotations, massage( with your own fingers, a lacrosse ball, a massage stick, or other massage tool), trigger point work and foam rolling.
Tip # 2: Loosen up the joint and surrounding tissues first with gentle mobilisation and joint manipulation before stretching.
3. Strength complements Flexibility
You may be thinking: What’ s strength got to do with flexibility? Well, quite a bit. In fact, strength and flexibility are very much related. Or should I say, interrelated.
The flexibility of a muscle is very dependent on the strength of that muscle: especially, strength at the end ranges of motion. 2 It’ s as though your body won’ t let you go past a certain level of flexibility until it knows you have the muscle strength to handle that improved range of motion.
80 | vol31 | no2 | JATMS