Flexibility First

Thinking back to my high school days, I can remember first learning about exercise and instantly finding an interest in the subject. Training with weights was always my favorite, as is often the case for men and adolescent boys alike. Get to the gym, get those guns pumped up and get out of there after you can no longer lift the weight off the stand. While there is nothing wrong with weight training (though my opinion on the exercise choices of most will be coming soon), many do not see exercise in the holistic light that it should be seen. People have specific goals in mind when they go to the gym and spending even a second on something that is not directly related to toning / bulking / endurance training would in their eyes be a waste of time. While there are probably a number of things that I would like to see emphasized more in the gym, the most neglected, yet one of the most important, is flexibility.

Reminiscing again on my early days of weight training, I was the same way. I would never stretch after a workout because I had gotten the “important” exercises out of the way, and I just wanted to get home. Sometimes I would get in a quick stretch or two between sets if I was tight, or maybe in the morning when I could barely walk, but I was obviously being reactive to the tightness that my training was causing. The result: sore muscles, restricted movement, bad technique, pain in my lower back, inability to play sports well, and problems in my shoulders during lifting. Looking back, it now makes so much sense! All of these issues, and more, can come from lack of flexibility. When your joints cannot go through their full range of motion, a number of key things happen. First, muscles will not be able to stretch to the length required to allow for full range of motion. What this means is that your body will be unable to move properly, which affects your performance in everything from washing your car to maintaining proper technique during exercise. As you continue to work through these faulty movement patterns, your body will have to compensate and eventually be put into a compromised position, resulting in injury. Second, you will lose power in movement. Your ability to move weight is based on your muscles ability to fully utilize the muscle fibers available. When you have tight muscles, the fibers are stuck in a semi-contracted state, preventing them from having a full contraction. The more bound up the muscles become, the less capable your muscles will be to live up to their full potential. This will clearly be detrimental for lifting weights, but it will more importantly inhibit your ability to perform more fundamental movements, such as running, jumping, and squatting. Finally, your body will feel downright tired. Think about how much harder it must be for our bodies to move through the world when there is resistance against every movement you try to make. Every step, every reach, and especially every time you try to pick something up, your body will be fighting against those tight muscles that aren’t allowing it to move the way it knows it should!

In the end, if your body cannot move properly, nothing else in exercise matters. The movement you put on top of faulty movement patterns only reinforces that dysfunction, and this dysfunction can lead to injury. And if the work you do to stay healthy is getting you injured, then what’s the point! So as a quick guide to what type of stretching is important, we need to think about the major movements of the body. The foot goes up and down (though the focus would be on moving it up), so here we would want a calf stretch. The leg bends at knee, which would require a quad stretch. The legs go forward, backward, and side to side, meaning that we will need to include exercises such as the butterfly, toe touch, lunge and pigeon. The trunk bends forward and back, so we can include the toe touch again, plus a cobra stretch. The upper back twists, bends, and extends, so will want to hold the hips straight and work on rotating the upper back in both directions, and then work on some cat and horse stretches. The arms go up, down, and side to side, so make sure to hold your arms in each of these positions. You could use your other arm or a wall to help put pressure on the stretch, but know that each direction is just as important as another.

If you could stretch in all of these directions after every workout you would be a gymnast! The goal, however, is not to spend hours stretching every day, so focus your time on stretching those muscles that were used that day. Start paying attention to the movement that you are doing in your workout and think about what muscles are being activated, so that when you finish up, you can put together a ten good minutes of stretching. We need to lengthen those muscles that have inevitably tightened up from exercise, and get them prepared for our future activities. Trust me; even if you need to skip a whole exercise to make sure that you stretch, your body is going to thank you. Fitness is not about any single workout, it’s about how long can you continue to exercise throughout the rest of your life. Good luck everyone and let’s get flexible!

-Colin