Superior stretching techniques.
Maximum Flexibility (Go east, young man!)
By The Sensei
Most athletes in the west possess the qualities of strength and fitness. Boxers, cross-trainers, powerlifters, weightlifters, bodybuilders and various sportspeople and gym junkies you will meet tend to have good muscle tone and mass, and cardiovascular stamina.By The Sensei
But what’s missing?
Usually, the weakest link in their fitness arsenal is flexibility; and this problem usually manifests worst in the spine and hamstrings. I’ve met guys who can press three-hundred and fifteen pounds overhead, but who have problems turning their head, the neck muscles are so stiff and locked up. Likewise, I once trained with an endurance athlete who could run several marathons a week, but winced when tying up his shoes, because all that work had made the muscles of his lower body too tight.
This is a bad, bad situation to get into. Flexibility is required for speed and agility; it promotes health and vascular functioning enhances other aspects of training, like recovery time. If you aren’t taking your flexibility seriously, start now. It is one of the three ‘F Vectors’ required by every Urban Warrior. If you want more information on the ideal routine, pick up The Urban Warrior’s Bible. Everything you need to know is in chapter two.
Yoga is an excellent flexibility discipline
In the meantime, here’s an invaluable tip however for those of you who do train for suppleness, but never seem to get much looser….
The western gold standard for flexibility is the toe-touch. Go to any training hall or gym, and at some point you will see a trainee bending down, legs locked or nearly so, training to reach as low as possible. Often, during discussions of flexibility, the question is asked; can you touch your toes? As a result, the most practiced flexibility exercise in the west is the forward bend. This is partly for cultural reasons; because people think that touching their toes equals flexibility. It’s partly because it’s easy; you just straighten your legs and bend forward at the hips. And it’s also partly because it’s convenient; in the gym, or outside after a run or walk, you don’t have to get down onto a possibly dirty, unhygienic floor. You can do the exercise standing up. Sounds ideal, eh?
Actually, it’s not. Don’t get me wrong; forward bends are a good exercise. They are convenient, simple, and do stretch the body. But there’s a problem. Once you get to the point where you can touch your toes—and even very inflexible people can get there quickly with very little training—it’s exceedingly difficult to improve beyond that level. I’ve known athletes do this exercise day in, day out for years, and not get any more flexible. It’s true even for martial artists who train this way—session after session, they retain the same level of suppleness. Year in, year out. They just never get any more flexible.
This can be very frustrating, and it represents a real waste of energy, because all that training time could be used productively doing something else. And it’s a shame, because the body can become incredibly flexible, quite quickly. It’s almost as though it wants to get supple. You just need to train it properly.
The problem is caused by what’s known as biomechanical limitation. Bending forwards with straight legs really stretches the hamstring complex and the hips where they form a “hinge” at the lower back between the spine and legs. This accounts for the easy, rapid progress the athlete makes over the first stage of training—these areas become more flexible. At least, initially. But very soon, they stop improving.
This is because the muscles of the legs and hips form a mechanical system with the spine. They are designed to function together, in many different ways. But although forward bends emphasize the hamstrings and hips, they don’t have much of an effect on the majority of the spine, from the lower back up to the neck.
But your body is smart; smarter than most people think. It wants to operate as a system. To prevent a lack of functional symmetry—one part overpowering another part, which would increase the likelihood of injury—the body literally halts its efforts to become more flexible when only one area of the system begins to change. When the hamstrings and hips reach a certain point of suppleness, if the spine has not followed suit, the body slows up and ultimately stops all progress in flexibility. This is what is meant by the term “biomechanical limitation”, and it’s what prevents people who focus too much on the forwards bend from becoming more flexible over time.
(Incidentally, the same principle of “biomechanical limitation” can work. against bodybuilders and strength athletes. If you only ever work your biceps, for example, they will only grow to a certain point and then stop, because the surrounding musculature—triceps, deltoids, etc.—are not strong enough to work with the biceps systematically anymore. If you want to grow your biceps to their maximum size, you have to work the related areas too! Bizarre, but fact.)
So, what’s the solution?
The solution is found in the way eastern athletes train for flexibility, and have for centuries. Although western trainees tend to stretch standing up, easterners—martial artists, yoga practitioners, etc.—drop to the floor. This is the “secret” to their jaw-dropping flexibility.
Next time you are training, try it. Lay back on the floor, and sit up. With legs together, slip your arms under your knees and try to touch your head to your kneecaps. This is easy with bent knees, but it becomes much harder to do as you s-l-o-w-l-y straighten out your legs. The eventual goal is to touch the face to the knees with the legs locked straight, and the hands holding the feet. This is the head-knee stretch, or paschimottanasana as it is called in Indian yoga.
The action of the head bending forwards to touch the legs is what is missing from the standing version, because it tends to be difficult to balance that way. But this attempt—to touch the head to the knees—curves the length of the spine to its fullest range-of-motion. As soon as this begins to happen, the body realizes that the spine is starting to loosen up in comparison to the hamstrings and hips, and they become more flexible too. In a hurry!
I once trained a climber who was depressed because he felt he had reached his limit of flexibility in the forward bend. He could barely touch his toes after a warm up, even though he had been doing forward bends several times a week, for many years. I taught him the head-knee stretch, and in five weeks he was able to stand on a thick book, bend down with locked legs (with no warm up) and place his palms flat on the floor. He couldn’t believe the results!
Next time somebody thinks they are really flexible because they can touch their toes, challenge them to drop to the floor and do the head-knee stretch. They will get the shock of their lives as they struggle and strain but get nowhere near—because their spine is stiff as a board.
Practice this regularly, and in a matter of months you won’t just be limber—you’ll have maximum flexibility!