All previous Concept Wednesdays

Today, we’ll be discussing Flexibility Training Basics

Whether your main reason for training flexibility is for a specific pose, as part of enabling your strength training or for general posture and health, the methods are largely the same.

A quick shout out to r/flexibility, for obvious reasons.

Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand

Just like when we talk about strength training, the body will adapt to the stresses you put it through, in a very specific, rather than general manner. You become more flexible through specific movements, no training will make you overall more flexible (you probably don’t want this to happen anyway).

Furthermore, just like we recommend that you train the movement you want to become strong at, if you have a specific pose goal (e.g pike, straddle splits) then practising that should make up a significant portion of your training towards it.

If general mobility and flexibility is the goal, then I recommend compound stretches that involve multiple joints, rather than isolated stretches, to make up the bulk of your training. More bang for your buck.

What limits your mobility?

Why can’t you flex your elbow so the anterior side of the joint is at 0 degrees? Your bloody bones get in the way, and if you’re all sorts of juicy, so do your guns. This is true for most of your joints in some degree, but these are largely the same from person to person. But there are some locations in the human body where the bony architecture can have a large amount of variance, which can lead to configurations that can limit your maximum flexibility through that joint more than usual. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to diagnose these without an experienced consultation.

Injuries that affect joints can also change the motion of that joint permanently or semi-permanently, particularly if you’ve had some metal and plastic put in your body.

Other than that, the majority of the rest of the flexibility restriction is going to be your muscles contracting to maintain a length (or range of lengths to be more specific).

Threat Modulation

Forgive me for anthropomorphizing the body a bit here.

The body instinctively tries to protect itself from threats, such as automatically jerking away from pain and heat, shutting down force production on slippery surfaces and decreasing force and finding compensation patterns in response to pain.

One such protective function is the body limiting the range of muscles to keep them in a range it can maintain control of your body position and still be able to produce force. This is sometimes called threat modulation, or the ability of the body to kick in functions to protect it from threatening situations.

The threat is specific to the length of the muscles being used (remember that muscles get strong in specific ranges, and can enter a state of passive insufficiency, where the muscle is too long to have enough segments crossing over to be able to contract) the load on the muscles (your bodyweight, just your limbs, or even added load), and the applied load on your muscles (attempting to move further in or out of the stretch, can partially explain the difference between passive flexibility vs active flexibility vs dynamic flexibility).

A good example is that when you’re unconscious, you can probably do the splits, if you have someone put you in that position, as the body isn’t modulating that threat, as a lot of involuntary muscle contraction is shut off.

Gaining range

If your muscles are contracting to stop you from getting into a range you can’t control, wouldn’t it make sense to give your body the ability to control these ranges? Basically, work out which muscle(s) is/are supporting the load (usually your bodyweight) for any stretch, and then we want to get them strong in that range we are trying to build from (about where you can get to in the stretch or a few degrees shorter than that).

You don’t need to do anything fancy to strengthen those specific muscles in that range, just get into the stretch you are trying to improve, and then contract those muscles. This will get you stronger over time which will help your body “feel more comfortable” in that range, allowing you to go further. Rinse and repeat. You’ll find that you’ll be able to get stronger in that range faster if you can contract harder, so try to get into a pose that allows you to push against unmoving resistance (such as the ground) that doesn’t move you out of the range you are trying to strengthen.

Since strength in a range and threat modulation both heavily have neurological and learning components, practicing the stretch more often, whether passively or contracting will help you increase your range. Basically, do it frequently!

Adding load

The intensity of the muscle contraction that keeps your muscles in their “safe” range is proportional to the load on the muscles, and the strength gained in that range is usually proportional to the intensity of muscle contraction in that range. So by simply adding load to a stretched position, you’ll automatically contract harder to maintain your position, increasing how strong you get in that position. You’ll also find that there’s an upper limit to how hard you can voluntarily contract your muscles against little to no load (one good reason self resistance isn’t effective by itself in the long term for strength training).

The load can come in a number of forms: simply reducing the amount of bodyweight you are supporting with muscles other than those being stretched (e.g taking your hands off the ground while practicing front splits), holding a weight, having a partner push down on you, etc.

Using load as a contrast can be a powerful tool to increase your flexibility. Getting strong in a range by adding load, then removing the load, thus removing how much the body modulates that threat, allowing you to go deeper, then adding load back on in this new through the course of a few sessions.

What about fascia?

Fascia is an interesting additional concept to consider. The packaging for your muscles, it often runs continuously across many muscles and joints along the entire length of the body. The fascia can stick to other pieces of fascia or the skin, impeding movement to some degree. This can have an effect on your body’s perception of threat and thus change its response to load.

I’d say that myofascial release techniques are likely going to be auxiliary components of your mobility training, rather than central, but do what makes you feel good.

Conclusion

We covered some of the why of stretching and loaded stretching, but haven’t really touched on the how, dynamic mobility or posture, so look forward to those future posts!

For improving your flexibility, I find it is really useful to know the functions of your muscles (the opposite of their agonist action is generally the direction they’ll stretch in) and to know whether the muscles you are stretching are bi- or tri-articulate (cross two or three joints, respectively) and that you can stretch that muscle by moving a combination of those joints, and can contract from a stretched position from either or a combination of those joints (you can stretch the hamstring [crosses the knee and hip] with a straight knee and flexing at the hip, or you can flex all the way at the hip and then extend the knee. Once at this stretched position you can contract the hamstring by attempting to bend the knee or by trying to extend the hip.) http://exrx.net/ is your friend.

Discussion Questions:

Do you have a specific stretching routine?

Do you use and modify load to stretch?

What about fascia?!