Insights: noun
“The capacity to gain an accurate and deep intuitive understanding of a person or thing.” Oxford dictionary
- Strength without flexibility is incomplete at best. Flexibility without strength is also incomplete- You must strive to attain and maintain a balance of both.
- Flexibility training means the systematic practice of moving through a full range with strength, control, and fluid grace. This training encompasses all aspects of stretching including but not limited to mobility drills, dynamic warmups, isometrics, passive stretching etc, etc. Everything has a time and place the trick is all about timing and programming.
- Beware of experts that say stretching is bad. Most are simply marketing something else and when you look into the alternative they are promoting it turns out to just be another form of stretching as defined in the previous insight. Do not throw the baby out with the bath water.
- Make good use of counter stretching. Superset opposite movements. They will improve each other. Examples: Side splits & windmils or Jefferson curls superset with Dr. Mark Cheng’s Sphinx.
- Combined mini-contractions of the target muscles with longer static holds in series going deeper and deeper for a minimum of 3 cycles per set. Become strong in end ranges.
- Program and cycle your flexibility training just as you would your strength training. Use sets and reps and rest periods between sets. Wave your load by putting in hard days, medium days and easy days. Use harder variations of the same stretch to vary intensity. If you just stretch as an after thought your results will reflect this.
- This goes for all training: Seek challenge without struggle! Challenge means what you are doing is difficult enough to demand your full attention but you are able to complete the move without compromising form. Struggle means you have to resort to monkey business, bad form or other undesirable behavior to make the attempt.
- If you owned a BMW chances are your would not or could not do mechanical work on this high performance machine yourself. But it is amazing how many people try to work on themselves …a much more expensive and complex machine. Do yourself a favor and hire an expert trainer. Checkout our Instructor Directory to find an expert near you.
These are just some insights into our system at Flexible Steel. If you are interested and want to take your training and knowledge to the next level join us at an upcoming live cert. I will be in New York City March 11th 2017 and would love to see you.
To register now for New York or one of our other worldwide events go here http://flexiblesteel.com/events.html
Become Flexible Steel Today.