Can You Bend to Your Own Will..?

You are probably not surprised to see a blog post promoting flexibility. It’s a well-known fact that maintaining mobility and elasticity of muscle and tendon tissue (but not ligaments – more on that in a future blog post) helps you to tolerate multi-directional movement as we age. That’s especially important for older athletes who want to preserve, as long as possible, both sports performance and general health with a lowered risk of injury. But the benefits of flexibility go far beyond these critical movement-based qualities, all the way to extending the probability you’ll live longer if you move more freely.  In fact, Harvard Medical School ranks flexibility as one of the top physical qualities that contribute to longevity.

Most mature fit folks do not have a structured, balanced, and progressively effective stretching program. Those athletes who do stretch often do flexibility work piecemeal, erratically, and/or only in response to encroaching pain or dysfunction. That’s too bad, because a preventive approach to individual muscle group flexibility (and full-body mobility – learn the difference in this video) can save you a lot of time and keep you off the operating table. A key principle in maintaining both is rooted in practicing both static and dynamic flexibility approaches. Here’s a quick breakdown of each.

While frequency and consistency for both dynamic and static stretching are important, the length of time the muscle/tendon chain is under elongating tension also contributes to the effectiveness equation.

My approach for over-50 athletes promotes both, and for my most well-conditioned athletes, combines the two.

Here’s a high-return-on-investment, WO-ending flexibility sequence that I do regularly (and have my more athletic clients who train using very demanding protocols do as well). The sequence recruits all the major muscles in functional, balanced proportions and integrates both static and dynamic elements. It’s also an outstanding time-saving cool-down, especially after resistance training or multi-format WOs.

Let me know if you have any questions by posting them in our private FB group so I can illuminate the issue for any of our subscribers who are interested.