What are the flexibility training techniques

Really effective flexibility training never relies on stretching without pain. The core is to take into account muscle temperature, nerve tolerance and joint movement space. For people who know the right way, the effect of practicing for one month is more obvious than stretching for half a year.

You can think of muscles as rubber bands in winter. When they are frozen and stiff, they are easy to break when pulled hard. When the sun warms them and then pulled, they can be stretched longer and not easily broken. I once took a horse racing enthusiast for three years. Before every competition, he squatted on the sidelines and pressed his legs hard to pull his hamstrings. Every time he finished running, he was still sore. I couldn't lift my legs, and I even pulled too hard once and injured my legs. I stopped training for a month. Later, I adjusted the training sequence. Before each stretch, I did 5 minutes of high leg raises and back kicks to raise the muscle temperature, and then combined with small-scale dynamic stretching. Not only did the problem of pre-match strains disappear, but my stride length was also nearly 5 cm longer than before.

There is a lot of quarrel on the Internet nowadays, saying that static stretching is useless and dynamic stretching is more correct. In fact, there is no difference between what both sides say, but the adaptation scenarios are different. If you are warming up before exercise and want to quickly increase joint mobility to avoid injury, then dynamic stretching is indeed more suitable, such as jumping jacks, arm circles, lunges, etc. Do it with a sense of force, which will not overly relax the muscles and affect your exercise performance; if you want to relax the muscles and lengthen the muscle fibers after exercise, then static stretching can be held for 20-30 seconds in one group, and stop when you feel the stretch, which is better than dynamic stretching that is dangling around. If you are practicing dance or gymnastics, which require extreme flexibility, you can also add PNF stretching mode, which is to resist force contraction for a few seconds and then relax and stretch. I previously helped a junior high school girl studying ballet adjust the training plan and interspersed PNF with her usual static pull training. It only took less than 3 weeks for her crossbar to go from 10 cm short of 10 centimeters to completely touching the ground, which was more than twice as fast as before relying solely on teacher compression.

It doesn’t mean that you have to lay out a yoga mat and go to a yoga studio to do flexibility training. Office workers can do it when they are sitting in the office. For example, sit on a chair and straighten one leg with the heel on the ground. Slowly lean your upper body forward until you feel a pulling sensation on the back of your thigh. Don’t arch your back hard. Hold for 20 seconds and change sides. The stiffness accumulated after sitting for a day will soon dissipate. It is much more effective than standing up and wandering around twice.

By the way, don’t believe the saying that “the more painful it is, the more effective it is.” If you feel tingling, numbness, or even pain after stretching, it means that the body’s tolerance has been exceeded. At this time, the muscles will trigger the protective mechanism to actively contract, but the stretch will become tighter and tighter. In severe cases, muscle fibers will be torn. I have met a young man before who strained his adductor muscles for two months in order to take pictures of friends.

In fact, flexibility also depends on innate endowment. Some people are born with loose joint capsules and can do the waist splits without much practice. Ordinary people do not have to pursue the extreme range. It is enough to meet the needs of daily exercise and not to suffer from sore shoulders and back stiffness at ordinary times. Taking your time will give you faster results than rushing to increase the range.