What should you pay attention to when doing flexibility training?

Don't aim at "stretching" or "pressing to the limit". All training must match your foundation and exercise purposes, otherwise it is easy to cause soft tissue damage or even joint instability.

To be honest, I have seen too many people who have injured themselves through blind training. A while ago, there was a young girl in the running group who just started. She always felt that her hip flexion was tight and affected her pace. She read the tutorial on the Internet and squatted down every day before going to bed. She held on until tears fell from her eyes. It took half an hour every time before she would get up. As a result, her hip hurt even when walking after only two weeks. When she went for an MRI, it was found that her labrum was slightly edematous, which was caused by the force of pulling it off. There is actually quite a quarrel on the Internet about the pain of stretching. One group says that there must be obvious pain in order to make progress, while the other group says that a slight stretching sensation is enough. In fact, both sides are right, but they are applicable to different groups - if professional gymnastics and figure skating athletes are prepared When the competition is about reaching the limit of mobility, the pain is normal under the control of the coach, but for us ordinary people, it is either to relax the tight muscles caused by sitting for a long time, or to activate before exercise to avoid injury. The pain level has exceeded the tolerance threshold of the soft tissue.

Don’t think that as long as there is no pain, everything will be fine. There is another problem that many people are not aware of: flexibility can never be practiced in isolation. It must be paired with strength training to be effective. A girl who came to me to adjust her round shoulders said that she had been practicing online for six months to open her shoulders. As a result, the snapping in her shoulders was getting worse and worse, and it even hurt when she raised her hand to lift something from a high place. When I asked her, I found out that she only did stretching every day, not even any back strength training. The soft tissues around her shoulders were loose, and the muscles in her back could not hold the joints at all, so they were loose and unstable. If you look at those veterans who have been practicing yoga for many years, they will never practice only stretching. The ratio of strength and flexibility is basically half and half. Otherwise, if the body is soft and has no support, it will be more likely to be twisted and injured than the hard body.

There are also many people who equate flexibility training with static stretching and stretch their legs and shoulders whenever they come up. The last time I went to an amateur basketball game, I saw a young man squatting on the sidelines and stretching his calves for almost ten minutes. As a result, he cramped when he took off to grab the board for the first time on the court. He squatted on the sidelines for a long time and could not recover. In fact, different training methods are suitable for different scenarios. During warm-up, dynamic stretching is suitable, such as leg swings, shoulder turns, lunges, etc., just to open the joints. Static stretching is more suitable after the training. If you want to increase the range of motion faster, you can also try PNF stretching. It means stretching until you feel the stretch, then exert force for a few seconds, then relax and pull down a little. It is much more efficient than hard stretching.

Oh, by the way, there is also an interesting controversy. Many people say that they are born tough and practice in vain. Indeed, there are studies that say that innate connective tissue elasticity can determine almost 50% of a person’s upper limit of flexibility, but the remaining 50% can definitely be supplemented by acquired training. I came into contact with a 42-year-old programmer brother before. At first, he sat for so long that he couldn’t even touch his ankles when he bent down. He practiced three times a week for only twenty minutes each time. After half a year, he could easily put his palms on the ground, and even his old back problems were relieved a lot.

In fact, to put it bluntly, flexibility training is essentially a process of dialogue with the body. Don’t compete with others to lower yourself, and don’t force yourself to complete the so-called “standard movements” on the Internet. After practicing, you will feel that your whole body is relaxed, and there will be no strange soreness and tingling the next day. This is the rhythm that suits you best.