Stay in the game

There are several things you can do to increase your flexibility: even if you feel like you’ve tried everything? Here are 7 tips to take you to a whole new level of flexibility.

1.  Injury Adds to Poor Flexibility

Injuries, whether tears, sprains, strains or the beginnings of injuries through the body feeling aches, pains, niggles, twinges, or sore spots, will put a stop to your flexibility as you deal with recovery and rehab.

Any time you have an injury of any kind (even one you don’t realize you’ve got), your body recognizes that as a weak link in the chain and will tighten the surrounding muscles. This is your body’s protective defensive mechanism being activated to prevent further damage to surrounding structures.

This is not limited to the tissues that have been injured as the body works as a complete complicate structure of movements and counter movements. An injury in your back for example, will affect the legs as it protects itself from too much movement in the injured area. This allows for healing to happen.

Tip #1: Work hard to get rid of all injuries that effect movement.

2.  Mobilize and Manipulate then Stretch

It’s important that the joints and associated soft tissues are prepared for the stretching they’re about to receive. To some gentle mobilization 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: If it takes 2 min to get into a full stretch take the same time to come out of the stretch. Injures happen here too as the body isn’t use to this movement, caution is required as we put ourselves back to what ww are use to. This will change over time.

3.  Strength complements Flexibility

You may be thinking: What’s strength got to do with flexibility? Well, quite a lot more than you think.

The flexibility of a muscle is very dependent on the strength of that muscle at the extreme end of the range of movement: Especially, strength at the end ranges of motion. It’s like your body won’t let you go past a certain level of flexibility until it knows you have the muscle strength to handle the movement at that range of motion. The surrounding support structures also need to operate at the range as well. They need to learn how to do their job, this takes time to develop, nerves, tendons, ligaments need to be switched on to the new range movement.

Tip #3: Work on strength as well as flexibility at the extreme range of movement.

4.  Types of Stretching

Static stretching is by far the best form of stretching for improving your flexibility and range of motion. In particular, long hold static stretching (held for longer than 30 seconds). Static stretches are stretching exercises that allow the muscle to lengthen. In other words, you get into the stretch position and hold the stretch for a specific amount of time. If you are stretching joints then fascia is involved which takes longer to release than muscle. This is due to structure of the tissue in different parts of the body.

Tip #4: Long hold static stretching is the most effective forms of for improving your flexibility quickly and permanently.

5.  Variety of Stretches

There’s 100’s of muscles in the body and it’s not uncommon for one muscle group to be made up of two, three or more smaller muscles. And they’re all somewhat interconnected to each other.

Tight hamstrings can cause lower back problems; tight hip muscles can lead to knee pain; and tight chest muscles can cause upper back pain. And if you really want to improve the flexibility of your hamstrings, you need to stretch your lower back, your buttocks, your hips, your groin, and your calves. We don’t move is a static way so your stretching should be static, it should reflex all possible movements.

Tip #5: Don’t do the same old boring stretches all the time; include a variety of stretches for all your muscle groups.

6.  When to Stretch

Stretching before exercise is to get you moving for that exercise.

One of the best times to stretch is about 30-60 min after your work-out. This is when your muscles have had some time to recover, but are still relatively warm and pliable, which makes it much easier to stretch and reach new levels of flexibility.

Tip #6: Set aside a period to time that is dedicated to increasing your flexibility

7.  Hydration, Nutrition and Sleep

Tip #7: Your general health and well-being are vital to your fitness and flexibility; keep hydrated, eat healthy and get adequate sleep.