How to stretch if you're inflexible

I used to think I could never get flexible.

After a year of doing yoga 3x per week - I was burnt out.

Then I learned that flexibility can be trained like strength:

• intensely

• infrequently

• with a focus on progression

And that’s how I got my front splits.

Believe it or not: I’m not naturally flexible.

At 25, I couldn’t touch my toes.

Everyone I met who was flexible either:

• stretched as a kid

• had done yoga for 10 years

So I tried yoga. And it helped. I did improve my whole body flexibility - but it took a lot of time, left me weak, and I burnt out on it.

I couldn’t justify doing 3x weekly, 60-90 minute yoga sessions. It wasn’t taking my body where I wanted to go, and the price was too high to pay for being more flexible.

So I gave up yoga for bodyweight fitness. Then I got into weightlifting, and a few years ago I finally learned the truth about stretching.

Flexibility is a form of strength

Stretching is not about actually increasing muscular length: the majority of gains you make are neurological.

Your body is trying to protect you by preventing you from entering weak ranges of motion.

If we look at a muscle’s ability to express strength, as a function of its length we can readily make the following observations:

• A muscle is strongest somewhere in the middle of its range of motion

• A muscle is weakest at the very limit of its range of motion

Increases in range come from retraining your nervous system.

We can give it confidence in positions by:

- Spending time there

- Getting stronger there

Most people haven't tried getting stronger - and this is where there's a huge opportunity for improvement. We apply strength training principles to the end range of motion in order to improve our ability to access that range of motion, and grow it over time.

How I practice High Intensity Stretching:

1. Throw on some groovy tunes.

2. Get into your end range of motion - slow & controlled

3. Activate your muscles

We want to activate both

• Antagonists (those that bring you deeper in the stretch)

For the side splits, in this example, that would be the muscles on the outside of the hip which bring my legs apart.

• Agonists (those that you're actually stretching)

For the side splits, it’s the hip adductors, located on the inside of the thigh which bring the legs together (oppose the splits position).

4. Oscillate around your max depth

Move in an out of the end range, momentarily pushing your limit.

A mix of passive motion and actively pulling and pushing yourself with the muscles you're trying to stretch works well.

But you must find your flexibility limit for that day

5. Deviate from the 'ideal' position

Twist nearby body parts, lean one way, then the other to change the loading angle. Finding space with micro variations.

When trying to access a new position - your mind has no concept of it yet.

So we want to experiment with different positions, finding the tiny tweaks that allow you personally to express the most flexibility. It won’t be the same as mine, or as anyone else’s. Our splits will look different.

Muscle exploration -> muscle memory

6. Load the stretch so that if feels HEAVY

For splits - bodyweight is enough.

For forward folds - 5-20kg added can help.

Loading helps overcome the passive tension of your muscles, because stretching big muscles takes big forces.

Use the minimum weight that gets you deeper. Unlike with strength training, we aim to progress the ROM over time, not the force produced. So use enough that allows you to get deeper, but no more.

7. Perform for sets & reps - not static holds.

This makes sure you're building strength. This also makes it fun instead of boring.

8. Recover fully between sessions

If you did it right - you'll have DOMS for days. So about twice a week works well for this type of stretching.

No need for a daily habit.

Hope this helps with your flexibility journey - let me know if you have any questions.

Stay strong,

-John