The basic method of flexibility training is repetition training

The most core, most widely applicable, and most universal basic method of flexibility training is the repetitive training method - whether you are a fitness novice who wants to improve sedentary stiffness, or a professional athlete aiming for performance, if you want to improve flexibility in a long-term, stable, and damage-free way, repetitive training is the basic path that cannot be avoided, without exception.

I guess many people have had this experience: I followed a stretching video on the Internet and pressed my legs hard for half an hour. At that time, I could barely touch my toes and felt that I was making rapid progress. However, when I fell asleep, my legs were as stiff as if they were filled with lead, and they returned to their original shape. It’s not that you have no talent, it’s that a single stretch can only temporarily reduce the viscosity of muscles and tendons. To put it bluntly, it is “temporarily stretched” without forming any structural changes at all. From the perspective of exercise physiology, our soft tissues inherently have the characteristic of "elastic hysteresis". Only by repeatedly and regularly giving it the same stretch stimulation, the Golgi tendon organs in the muscles will slowly adapt to this elongated state, and the collagen fibers of the ligaments and tendons will slowly rearrange themselves, ultimately achieving a stable increase in flexibility. This is really not something that can be accomplished with one extreme stretch.

Interestingly, different training systems in the fitness circle are quarreling now. Some say that static stretching will affect strength performance and all dynamic stretching should be used. Others say that long-term static holding of the yoga school is king. Some people say that PNF (contraction-relaxation stretching) is the ceiling for improving flexibility, and its efficiency is several times higher than ordinary stretching. But at the end of the argument, you will find that no one dares to say that they don’t need to repeat: dynamic stretching requires 3 groups of 12 times each warm-up, and practice at least 4 times a week; yoga requires forward bending to take 3 fixed classes a week, and an additional 10 minutes of practice at home every day; even PNF, which is so popular, needs to repeat 3-4 cycles of contraction and relaxation in one movement to be effective. The essence is all the core of repetitive training, but the form of a single operation is different.

When I was helping at the youth training camp of the provincial team, I met a child who was practicing sprinting. In order to pass the sitting and forward bending event of the physical test, he held his knees for two hours at home on the weekend. As a result, he strained his hamstrings and was unable to train for a whole week. Later, I changed the plan for him: add 3 sets of dynamic lunge leg presses during the warm-up before each training, 15 times each for the left and right legs. After the training, do 3 sets of static hamstring stretching, each set for 30 seconds. There is no need to deliberately pursue the range, as long as there is a feeling of stretch, practice 5 days a week. With such a simple plan, he practiced faithfully for two months. The sitting forward bending position increased from 2 cm at the beginning to 12 cm without any injuries.

Of course, no one objects to this statement. Nowadays, there are many "quick-starters" on the Internet who think that repeated training is too inefficient. They advocate the use of impact-style rapid swinging of the legs and fierce pressing of the hips, saying that you can do a horizontal split in one week and touch the ground in two weeks. I have to say that this method is not completely useless. It is occasionally used by professional teams when giving high-level athletes pre-match results. But the premise is that there is a coach watching and controlling the strength, and the muscle control ability of the athletes is much stronger than that of ordinary people. If ordinary enthusiasts learn blindly, they will most likely strain the microfibers of the muscles. The pain may be mild for three to five days. In severe cases, it may even cause ligament tear, which will delay the training for more than half a year, which is not worth the gain.

To be honest, I have stepped on pits when practicing the horizontal fork myself. I spent three days fishing and two days drying the net. I pressed it for a while when I remembered it, and threw it aside when I couldn't remember it. After half a year of practice, it was still more than ten centimeters off the ground. Later, I simply arranged stretching into the routine before going to bed. I sat on the yoga mat after taking a shower every day, and first did 10 dynamic leg presses of side lunges, and then statically held each side for 1 minute. It only took 10 minutes in total. I didn’t care about how much the pressure must be, as long as it felt like a stretch. Just repeating this every day, after more than two months, I was able to completely touch the ground. Even I was surprised. Even if you are an office worker who sits for a long time, you don’t have to take time to go to the gym. Just stand up and do 10 slight forward bends while holding on to the table every hour after sitting. You don’t need to bend too hard. Just feel like your waist is being stretched. If you stick to it for a week, you will obviously feel that your waist is not so stiff, and the soreness and pain caused by sitting for a long time will be relieved a lot.

To put it bluntly, flexibility itself is not an ability that can be obtained by sudden attack, it is a matter of steady stream. Repeated training may seem stupid. It has neither fancy skills nor the much-hyped quick results, but it is the most stable, most universal, and least error-prone basic plan. All the fancy advanced stretching techniques are essentially based on repetition. If you can't even do the most basic regular repetitions, no matter how powerful the method is, it will be useless.