Getting Bendy

Do you experience repetitive pain in your shoulders, hips or back? They may be too tight!

But stretching by itself isn’t an effective way to get more flexible - we need to build control at all points in a muscle’s range (especially the end range when it’s at a major stretch).

In my gym, many of us are working on improving our control at end range. We are using calisthenic-type exercises (typically bodyweight, unloaded or weight-supported) where the resistance of the opposing muscle groups provides the load – like sitting in a pike, using your quads to push your knees straight to stretch your hamstrings.

The question I get sometimes is “is my range limited by something else?”. My client Kate and I have been exploring this using seated straddles (feet out sideways). Kate is really flexible but has hit a roadblock in getting more flexible. If Kate rolled her leg bones outwards, she solved a compression in her hip (likely what was happening was her the humeral neck bones were pressuring her iliac bones).

The video below video explains tension vs compression (words which sometimes I admittedly use interchangeably). In particular, the bit we are talking about with hips is here at 1:21 -

Want to get rid of your pain and improve your mobility? Watch the whole video here to see how we can use one set of muscles to work (or stretch) the other set. It’s simple training that can be done without equipment and is highly effective.

If you need further guidance, shoot me an email or comment on this post!

Dr Sal