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Hi everyone. My name is Candace Cabrera with Team GNC. I’m a yoga instructor, personal trainer, and entrepreneur. On today’s episode of GNC’s Expert Series, we’re going to be talking about flexibility. There are a lot of misconceptions out there about flexibility. Today I’m going to go over a couple of those common misconceptions to arm you with the information you need to have better flexibility and live well in your body.
Up first, the myth is, I can touch my toes if I’m flexible. Flexibility is so much more than just being able to touch your toes. Flexibility is the extensibility in soft tissue so that you can find full range of motion pain free in your joints. Healthy muscles should be able to stretch and contract. The ability to stretch, we get that through activities of daily living, and moving lots, and having a stretching practice, or a foam rolling practice. Just getting your body moving will help with your flexibility.
Flexibility and mobility go hand in hand. Flexibility is that sense of elasticity. Mobility is that sense of control with that elasticity. For example, if you’re practicing the splits, you don’t want to just pop right down into it because popping right down into it means you’re not really doing so with much control. That control piece is really important to help prevent injury.
Myth umber two, flexibility is just for the yogis. That couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s so important that everybody has some sort of flexibility routine. If you’re someone who enjoys squatting, for example, having really good flexibility through your calves will be helpful, and really good mobility through your ankles will help you to get deeper into your squat, so the overall quality of your lifts improve when you have flexibility and mobility. Flexibility is truly for everyone, whether you’re older or younger, no matter what you do in your day to day life, having both the strength and the flexibility should help to keep you feeling really good in your body.
Myth number three, it’s best to stretch in a warm environment. With this one, you have to be a little careful with it. If you go to a hot yoga class, it feels so good. Your muscles are warm, you’re sweating. You feel excellent, but you have to be careful because that heat can sometimes trick your body into stretching beyond its normal limit, and the next day you could feel pretty sore. It’s not that your hot yoga is bad at all. It’s just that you have to be mindful about that heat and knowing where your limits are and working just within your limits.
Myth number four, some people are just born flexible. The truth is many of us are born flexible. If you ever watch a toddler beginning to learn to walk or to get up from crawling, you’ll see they move really, really well and their joints are mobile. Many of us were like that at one point, ans then we grew up. We were asked to sit at our desks. Don’t move as much. As we got older and continued sitting in our desks for work or to be on calls, we lost a lot of that movement. Take a look at your situation. If you are somebody who sits at a desk all day, is there an opportunity to create a standing desk situation? Or could you break for a five minute foam rolling session?
The other thing you may want to think about is movement of your spine. This can help you to feel more flexible in your body. The spine moves six ways. You can move rotation to the [00:03:30] right, rotation to the left, spinal extension is when you lift your head and your tail bone, spinal flexion is when you round your back, and then lateral flexion, bending over to the right and then bending over to the left. Incorporating these six movements just takes a minute or two and can help you to feel so much more flexible in your body. Your spine is your center and everything moves from there. If your spine is feeling really good, the rest of your body will follow.
Myth number five, static stretching is the best type of stretching. It depends on the goal you’re after with your stretching. With a static stretch, it’s really great for calming that muscle down, really relaxing it, lengthening it. It’s something you definitely want to do after a workout or post run. Dynamic stretching is when you’re incorporating a bit more movement. It’s better for activating the muscle. You’re gently awakening it, improving upon its flexibility, but you’re not relaxing it to the point that it won’t want to work when it’s time to go for your run or start your workout.
Two of the main muscles you want to think about to help support your runs are your psoas and your glutes. To activate your psoas you can do something like a banded knee lift. You put a light resistance band around your feet as shown, and then one at a time lift your knee. This is going to begin to activate your psoas to make you a more efficient runner. After your run, try releasing your psoas through a lunge. You’ll bring one knee to the ground and the other foot out in front, tuck your tailbone under, and you should feel a really good stretch through that psoas before switching sides.
To activate your glutes, you could try something like a glute bridge. You’ll press through your heels and move the hips up and down to activate your glutes, which are really important for running because they help to stabilize your pelvis and support your low back. To release the glutes, you could do something like a standing figure four, where you’ll cross your ankle over your thigh, send your hips back and reach your chest forward. The deeper you go with the chest, the more you’re going to feel this through the glutes and that’ll help to release the activation that you’ve done on your run.
That does it. Thank you so much for watching. I hope these tips have been helpful to you, so you feel more mobile and more flexible in your body. Don’t forget to like this video, comment, and subscribe for more. See you next time.
