January 8, 2010

How To Improve Your Flexibility And Why – Lifters

Flexibility has long been treated like the ugly girlfriend no one wants to talk about. She’s always there, but you wish she wasn’t.

Well flexibility can be more beneficial to you than an ugly girlfriend when it comes to your lifting.

I’ve “always” been flexible, and I say always because I began stretching when I was 9 for Tae Kwon Do. I was able to drop down in splits and do all sorts of crazy stuff guys shouldn’t be able to do up until I was about 18 yrs old.

It really came in handy when I ran track, as I never got injured, and handy again in lifting because I’m able to lift a lot more that people my size and again, without injury.

So that being said, Why should you improve your flexibility if you’re a lifter?

Increase Blood Flow – means more of those vital muscle building nutrients can get to your muscles resulting in more effective workouts
Decreased Risk Injury – No one likes to be injured and it’s true what they say, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” (or a hefty hospital bill)
Increased Range of Motion – resulting in increased weight on your lifts

Those are the top reasons. Now that you know why you should improve your flexibility – Here’s how.

We did a lot of static stretching in Tae Kwon Do before class. Over time, my flexibility improved greatly. As I got into other sports, I realized that dynamic stretching before the sport was a lot more effective.

In football for instance, we did high knees and jumping jacks. Dynamic stretching is what you would normally call a “warm up” routine.

It’s a series of movements designed to mimic the sport and get the blood flowing.

Static stretching lacks this component.

So nowadays, before I lift, I do dynamic stretching and save the static stretching for after. It helps with the “cool down” and lessens the likelyhood of me being sore.

Here’s a sample of the dynamic stretches that I do before a workout

High knees
High kicks – take a stiff leg and fling it up high as you can – getting higher with each repetition
Squat jumps
Jumping jacks
Torso twists
Arm crossovers – cross my arms in front of my body alternating top and bottom

Like I said, these are just a few, but far more than anything I see most lifters doing in the gym. And they all wonder what my secret is…

In addition to doing dynamic stretches, you should warm up on the lift you’re doing. It’s best to lift 1/3 of the weight 10 to 15 times.

Lastly, you should spend a good deal of time in your static strecthing. This is where your real flexibility comes in.

A good rule is 15 to 30 mins each day. When you do this, try to improve from session to session. My friends and I used to have competitions on who could split the lowest.

This served as great motivation for us to reach our potential. The same holds true for you.

Set a goal to touch your toes (if you can’t) and challenge yourself each time you stretch to go further and hold it longer.

Trust me, the benefits greatly outweigh the temporary pain of doing this.

So until next time, Get Big. Get Ripped. Get Fit With Mitch.

Mitch

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