Flexibility tips?

[dimo]

Yoga

[PatTheRat]

What do they do differently in yoga?

[Manufest]

yoga is alot of stretches, holding different positions, alot of back flexibility, and its really calming too. good for balance too.

what kind of flexibility are you looking for?

[PatTheRat]

My goal is higher kicks with no pain.

My split sideways is pretty bad. It hurts my hips to go very far. I can go almost all the way down with left leg in front and getting closer with the right leg in front. That side stretch is a killer though. Pretty difficult to make any progress.

[Manufest]

straddle splits are hard to get, really hard and it takes a long time to get them, especially if you're male , females are natually flexible and can get really flexible fast, *not fair*

ok here's a suggestion, it's what i do if i don't have a stretching machine near by :

[Manufest]

what format does it need to be to show the pic instead of needing to dl it?

[PatTheRat]

Here, I made it into a GIF for all you other non-Windoz people.

That's good. I'll bet it would work better if you used ankle weights though?

[Manufest]

stretching is meant to be slow, this is a great way to do it slow, i watch movies in this position, read books, i want to get a laptop so i can type in this postions (LOL) but its great b/c you can hold it for a very long time, get out, stretch ur other muscles, go back into it ........ for a long time,

i guess you could put weights on but i haven't seen any need for it, this hurts enough after a few mins anyways and you know you're stretching


and, i assumed that because it said that bitmap was a supported file that i didn't need to change it into a gif, i guess i should have though, thanks

[PatTheRat]

no sweat. thank you. good suggestion.

[dimo]

Ashtanga Yoga

Flexibility takes time; forcing a stretch will cause injury. whatever the martial art ... the practice of yoga increases flexibility and builds strength.

http://www.balancestudios.net/#

[PatTheRat]

I was also thinking of checking into what ballet dancers do as far as stretching exercises. Anyone have any experience with this?

[Toudiyama[NL]]

Originally posted by PatTheRat
I've noticed that after doing weight training with the legs is a great time to do flexibility work. The muscles are already warm. I guess any moderate leg exercises would help. I hate stretching out cold!

Not warm but to tired to work against the motion
Yanda stretching: tense the muscle you want to stretch for 8-10 sec then stretch for 20-30 sec, then tensing again but from the position you last stretched to, followed by stretching again, bit by bit you will get further

Other one stand strait up, place one foot before the other not to far away, toes from the floor, grab hold of the toes with the sameside hand and try to touch the upper leg with your chest
Do both sides, after this legs against eachother and fold the body
Last part isn't stretching but if yiou do this before and after the stretching you will see the difference
if you have done this excercise for some time the front foot can be placed further away

[Manufest]

Originally posted by PatTheRat
I was also thinking of checking into what ballet dancers do as far as stretching exercises. Anyone have any experience with this?

i've been doing ballet , tap and jazz for about 10 years....... and thats where i learned alot of the stretches that i do. In ballet, alot of the stretches are on the bar, puttin one leg on the bar and doing various stretches (back flexiblity increases alot..) and i get more of a good stretch there then at any of the MA's places i've done trial lessons at...

Dance gives you awesome balance, and its a decent workout, depending on what the class is working on.

ballet usually gives you a total body stretch, although the focus is more your legs.

[PatTheRat]

Good input, folks! I thought I'd pass along this link to anyone that's interesed:

Stretching

[Manufest]

been there done that lol

that sites pretty good, although its really hard to describe stretches, usually a teacher or at least a diagram is more effective.


it has some good tips like don't bounce (which just does the opposite of waht you're tryin to do...)