The role and significance of flexibility training

The core function of flexibility training is to expand the safe range of motion of human joints and reduce the risk of injury in sports and daily activities. It is essentially a safe expansion of the body's "activity boundaries". It is by no means an exclusive demand for dance and yoga enthusiasts. It has irreplaceable long-term health value for ordinary sedentary people and chronic disease rehabilitation groups.

Many people's impression of flexibility training is still in "performative events" such as doing the splits and lowering the waist. They feel that there is no need to do it if they don't practice their talents. A 28-year-old Internet programmer client I worked with before bent down to tie the knot at the most exaggerated moment. Even pulling my shoelaces would cause pain in my lower back for a long time. I went to the hospital to take a X-ray and there was nothing wrong with my lumbar spine. The problem was that after sitting for two years, my hamstring muscles (the muscles on the back of my thighs that get sore when stretched) were as stiff as a frozen rubber band, and it hurt even if I pulled it even slightly. The training I arranged for him was simple, that is, sit on the bed every night before going to bed, straighten your legs and slowly lean your upper body forward, hold for 15 seconds, and do 3 sets. In addition, every hour you sit at work, stand up and hold on to the table to stretch your hip flexors for 20 seconds. After only three weeks, he told me that now he squats on the toilet to watch short videos for 20 minutes, and his legs are no longer numb and his waist is sore when he stands.

What’s interesting is that there has been a debate about flexibility training in fitness circles for almost ten years. One group says that static stretching should never be done before strength training, as it will reduce muscle strength. Dynamic stretching is the best option.； The other group says that ordinary people are in poor physical condition and can easily twist themselves if dynamic stretching is not done correctly. Static stretching is safer. I have been a member myself for so many years, and I feel that there is actually nothing wrong with these two statements, but they are applicable to different groups of people. For example, I coached a badminton player from the school team who had to press his legs for 5 minutes before every game. Later, he always said that his groin was prone to pain. I changed him to do 3 sets of dynamic stretching before the game, including leg raises, hip rotations, and lunges. After that, he played in the league for a semester without any strain problems. In turn, I give charity classes to the 60-year-old aunts in the community. I don’t let them do jumping dynamic stretching. Instead, they hold on to the railing and slowly press their legs and pull their shoulders, in groups of 10 seconds. The rhythm is slow, so they won’t faint easily, and they won’t stretch their ligaments because of too fast movements.

Don’t think that flexibility training is just about exercise and stretching. Many people’s posture problems are actually related to poor flexibility. I used to have a little girl who worked as a beauty anchor. She sat in front of the camera for 8 hours a day. Her breasts were so hunched over that she had to have her bones adjusted several times. She returned to her original shape within two weeks at most. She also spent thousands on a back brace, which made her unable to breathe. I evaluated her and found that her pectoralis major and pectoralis minor muscles were too tight. She held her cell phone and sat crookedly all the time, which pulled her shoulders forward so much that she couldn't hold them back. The muscles in her back didn't have enough strength to pull her back, so she naturally became hunched. The training arranged for her was to do 3 sets of chest muscle stretching facing the corner after the broadcast every day, for 20 seconds each time, plus 10 shoulder-opening flexibility training. It only took more than a month. She said that now she doesn’t have to deliberately straighten her shoulders, and her shoulders will naturally open up, and even the high bulge of wealth before has disappeared by half.

Of course, this does not mean that the more flexible you are, the better you are. I have met a young girl who went to extremes before. In order to practice the cross horse, she pressed her legs for an hour every day. As a result, the medial collateral ligament of the knee joint became loose. She occasionally wobbled when walking on a flat road, and it still hurt. Nowadays, many professional sports rehabilitation practitioners say that the amplitude of flexibility training must match the muscle strength. To what extent your hip joint can open, the corresponding gluteal muscles and core strength must be able to hold this angle. Otherwise, the joints will lose the protection of ligaments and muscles and become more susceptible to injury. I have encountered this pitfall when practicing deadlifts before. At that time, I always felt that I was flexible enough. I would press my legs for a long time before each pull. As a result, my lower back would be sore as soon as the weight was lifted. Later, I realized that although my hip flexors were stretched, my core strength had not kept up. When I bent my hips, my waist would bend unconsciously. Later, I adjusted the length of the stretch and added core training. The deadlift weight increased by 20 kilograms, and my lower back no longer hurts.

In fact, you really don’t need to think about flexibility training too complicated, and you don’t have to force yourself to achieve “visual results” such as doing splits and reaching your toes. When you go fishing at work, you turn your neck twice, stand up and stretch after sitting for a long time, or pull your shoulders when you queue up at the supermarket. In essence, you are doing flexibility training. To put it bluntly, the most practical meaning of practicing this is that when you are in your fifties or sixties, you can still bend down to tie your shoelaces, raise your hand to reach the box on the top of the wardrobe without causing pain, go out to climb mountains and dance square dances, and you will be fine when others have sore backs and legs. This is better than anything else.