Bryce Lane, Jan-2003

In the fitness and strength fields we use broad categories to describe performances and means of improving them. Two of these categories are “strength” and “flexibility”. We imagine that these are separate things that you may have some given amount of one or the other independently or even that they come at each others expense. This leads to a lot of misunderstandings, wasted time and counterproductive effort.

The problem lies as many problems do, in the definitions. I will give two definitions here that will help give you a new way of thinking, then show how those definitions can be more practically put to use than the old ones.

Strength—How much force can be applied from any given position.

Flexibility—The range of motion in which force can be competently applied.

You can see from these definitions that we are talking about two different aspects of one thing. More like different facets on one stone than different stones. I use this definition of “strength” since it is broadly applicable to many different sports and movements. Look at the definition of “flexibility” however. This differs from what is commonly accepted at the moment and I base it on practical considerations, not theoretical ones. Where I think the line should be drawn is not by how far a joint or limb can be twisted, stretched, forced or pried, but instead by how large the range of motion in which that limb or joint can be *used*, under control. Any limb on anyone with sufficient force applied can become *very* flexible. You can dislocate or viciously twist nearly anything anywhere on a human being even on yourself, but is this a good way to define flexibility?

With real flexibility you can use the full ROM without warming up. In other words if it takes twenty minutes of “stretching” to drop into a split then can you really do a split or not?

Important note: Nothing in this article is “safe”. If you do what is described in this article you are taking risks. There is no such thing as a “safe exercise”, “safe automobile” or a firearm that safe to point at your head. Anything can be made dangerous through the proper application of carelessness, foolishness or stubborn-ness. Life, exercise and all its rewards belong to people who can intelligently understand and deal with risks. Pay attention to what you are doing and make modifications based on what you observe about yourself. Make this yours!

Structural factors and limitations.

Many people are born or very early-on become structurally flexible in the joints. There are different syndromes that can lead to looser joints. Some people can do dislocations easily and some can’t. However this is not the blessing it might appear to be. Many of these people are also easily injured and cannot stand up to the training needed to turn this ability into anything athletically significant. Many of these people can force themselves into some mighty crazy positions, but they cannot apply force competently there. With such weakness in the joint, anyone can be crammed into a mighty small box, the question is about getting back up and out under your own power. "Is that ROM useful and can control be exerted throughout it" is the question. The ability to do dislocations is not athletically useful in any sport I am aware of so I do not include it under the definition of “flexibility” although the ability to easily perform dislocations is often mistaken for athletically useful flexibility.

Thin people tend to do better at this than thicker individuals for the obvious reason that there is less of them to get in the way. A man with a barrel chest is not going to be able to front-bend his head down to touch his knees as easily as a man with a flat or somewhat sunken chest and no belly. An individual with twenty five inch or more thighs is going to have a great deal more trouble with a lotus position simply because their legs have to rotate a great deal more to get the feet on top of the thighs and there is less space for angling to do so. They can be loose as wet rope in the joint and muscles and still not be able to do it. This is not to say however that the larger individual is less “flexible” than the thinner individual, it’s simply that no matter how hard you work, you cannot bend or push through yourself. This has nothing to do with how “tight” or “loose” your muscles or joints are.

There are differences in hip structure that can make doing side splits difficult for some people. Generally if you can put your foot up on an object at waist level without tilting your hips, then you can do the split with sufficient training. If you have this trouble there are still different splits you can do that are just as amazing so don’t feel too bad.

Reasons for inflexibility

Obviously there are some injuries that can create inflexibility, but if you don’t have one (and you will know if you do) then don’t worry about it. If you are very old there can be problems too among other circulatory and bone density problems. If your joints are degenerating, not being able to do the splits is the least of your problems.

The biggest cause of inflexibility is simply that we have not learned to apply force in the particular area of ROM that is in question. When your nervous system detects that no controlling force can be applied within an area of ROM then the muscles involuntarily tense to keep you from going there. Its your body’s way of protecting you. Its like trying to make yourself fall forward. Go ahead, try. What will happen if you try this sincerely is that right at the instant you attempt to actually do it, every muscle in your body will tense up and prevent you. Humans have a lot of these little protective mechanisms so we won’t do the foolishness our “higher brains” insist on trying to do sometimes.

The big “secret” is that we don’t have flexibility because we don’t practice it and because we do not practice applying force at those further ROMs we become weaker and the cycle continues until you become what many people call “tight”. The entire secret lies in that one statement. You become “tight” because your body is trying to keep you from going where you cannot exercise control, and over a sedentary lifetime that can become most of your range of motion.

How to get flex-able

The secret to useful flexibility is to progressively teach yourself to apply force at progressively larger ranges. There are many ways to do this from isometrics to simple full ROM movements with weights or body resistance. The one way *not* to get flexible in any useful sense is to practice forcing yourself into painful positions and staying there till you “loosen up” as I said above “if it takes twenty minutes to warm up into a split, can you really do a split?”.

Just for the sake of modeling the issue so it is easier to think about, I like to divide flexibility into four categories:

1.) Front-bend

2.) Back-bend

3.) Split

4.) Shoulder

Each of these should be pretty obvious. Front-bend is the ability to bring your head forward towards your feet whether you are standing up, sitting down or in any position the concept is the same. Back-bend is the opposite and I include the neck in this, not only the hips and lower back. In the “split” category I include side and front splits as well as oversplit. The shoulder category involves how far your arms can move at the shoulders under control and without dislocations.

There are other ways these could be categorized and they tend to overlap in some cases. You could also get much more detailed, but I have never seen that it is useful to do so, just for the sake of performance. If you are working in therapy or rehab then you must be very specific but if you are injured or recovering you shouldn’t be doing this kind of thing anyway by yourself.

Front-bend:

Block deadlift: You stand up on a block or platform (9-12” is fine to have some room to work) and take a bar from 45# to maybe 135# tops if you are Hercules already. With straight but not quite locked legs you bend down with the bar till you feel a counter-pull happening involuntarily in your hamstrings or calves. If you legs are shaking you have gone too-far too-fast already. Now, when you feel that pull then tense your legs voluntarily as much as you can for a few seconds and then in one instant relax and let your breath out. You will go down a bit further. Do 2-3 cycles of this and get a feel for how the breathing/tension cycle works with you. When it happens just right its pretty easy to tell…. you sink further down. Come up to standing and rest a moment before you do another.

Straight leg zercher lift: This is the same as the above except you don’t use a platform and hold the bar “Zercher style” in the crooks of your arms to do a similar thing as above. If you can bend over and rest the plates (20kg or 45#’ers) on the floor with straight legs and come back up then you have really accomplished something and it is time to use smaller plates.

Zercher from floor and spider lift: This is more for hip and spinal flexibility and strength. You bend over with your heels together and your feet turned out (my way) or with your feet out wide like in a sumo-deadlift. Bend over and slip your elbows under the bar and lift it up in the crooks of your arms with the bar close to your body. The way to increase ROM in this one is to use smaller plates (I can do this with 10# plates) or raise your feet on small blocks and reach down further. You can do breathing/tension cycles like the lifts above also. For beginners you can take the bar off blocks or jackstands at an easy height and then back up a bit and do breathing/tension cycles to try and sink with the bar till it is down. You can eventually get with this to the point where you can touch your forehead to your feet or beyond even that. You do not need much weight and anything over 135# is asking for trouble. This is full range like a squat. The idea is to do it with ever smaller plates.

Floor good morning legs together: Sit with your legs straight out in front of you on the floor and have someone hand you the bar or take it from a pair of jackstands. You bend down towards your legs trying to get your “nose to your knees”. The process is the same as above. You go down to where you feel tension, then tense the muscles yourself voluntarily and do a few tension/breathing cycles then come back up and rest for a few seconds. It’s the same thing as the first exercise except you are sitting down.

Floor good morning legs apart: You sit with your legs apart enough to get your chest to the floor. Take a bar from stands or have it handed to you then do the exercise the same as the one above except try to get your chest to the floor, do this at first with a very light weight (just the bar) or even no weight except your own if need be. Follow the same tension/breathing cycle idea. When you can get your chest to the floor you can demonstrate this by having the bar on the floor with big plates down by your feet, then bending over to the floor, rolling the bar over the back of your head and then coming up to a sitting position. You can do full good mornings this way from sitting to having the bar resting on the floor and back up again when you get “advanced”. Do this with and arched back, don't "hunch" over.

Back-bend
Handbridge: This is a backbending exercise many children do for play. You lay on your back and then with effort from your arms and the entire back side of your body you push up into an arch where your hands and toes are all there is on the ground. The trick to this is to use your tension/breathing cycle to push with your back side while conciously learning to relax your front side. Push your chest out and try to get it vertically over your hands at the top. You can do this for reps with a couple of tension/breathing cycles in between. Also as a varitation you can go up into the handbridge on your toes and do reps of lowering your heels to the ground for extra range. You can also mix this with the neck bridge or wrestlers bridge below, pushing up into the handbridge, going as far as you can and then lowering into the neckbridge.

Neck bridge: Many people think of this as a “neck exercise” and its not, that only a small part of it. It’s a whole spine exercise. Instead of just trying to bend your neck till your nose is down, try pushing your chest out and getting your hips up as high as you can, that is the real secret. If you can rest on the bridge or your nose and forehead with no hands then you are pretty good, if you can do that with your heels down for a minute or two you are really good, if you can do this touching your chin and resting then you are “beyond”. If you are looking out between your feet then you get the gold medal on this one!

Wall walking: This is a means of working into a bridge if you are a beginner, and improving it if you are further along. You put your feet 2-3 foot lengths facing away from the wall, then you bend backwards and walk with your hands down the wall until you are in a bridge or as far as you can go. While you are down there, here are some things to do. The first is to use tension/breathing cycles to try and touch your chest to the wall while you are in a neck bridge position, the second more (much more) difficult feat is to try to push up into a handbridge while your chest stays in close contact with the wall. You use the tension/breathing cycles with this also for reps.

Headstand bend: Get in and headstand and let your legs bend down over your back. Go as far as you can, do a few tension/breathing cycles and come back up to a straight headstand. The goal is to get your feet as close to your head as possible on the back side. This is basically an upside down bridge.

Cuff bend: You can use ankle cuffs and some lengths of good rope. Lying on your side you backbend as far as you can with one leg or two. You take the rope or ropes and instead of pulling your feet towards your head you pull with your feet and hands isometrically on the rope for your tension/breath cycles and then try to get ever tighter in the bend. Again simply a variation of the bridge.

Split
Towell side split: Put each of your feet on fluffy towels on a slick floor. Use stands or a box to hold onto at first and lower yourself down by spreadin your legs to where you feel tension. Then tense voluntarily and do a few tension/breathing cycles. Scissor your legs together again to come up under as much of your own power as you can manage. Do as much of the lifting with your legs as you can, use only the support from your hands that you need to. You can rotate your feet or tilt your hips to help, find the right angles for you.

Towell front split: Same deal with the towels except you are putting one leg fore and one aft. You do the same basic thing as you did on the side split. There is one note here though, you need to tilt your hips so you can get your back leg down. Arch your back as much as you can and it will lay right on back. Most people try to go down “square”. The human body won’t do that no matter how much you practice. You have to bend your spine to get your back leg to lay down.

Laying down split: You can buy lined leg-cuffs at your local sporting goods store. It doesn’t take a whole lot of weight to do this, and be sure to keep them on a short tether so they don’t swing. This works very well laying on a bench and having a spotter can be a good idea also. You simply try to lower both legs out in a side split or the front leg in a front split down to your shoulder. You use enough weight to where you can feel resistance enough to do your tension/breathing cycles, but not so much that you are getting “pulled”, "wishboned" or get yourself in balance trouble.

Board Side split: You get a long 2x8 from your local hardware store and screw on some good handles in the middle or a rope if needed. Sit with your legs spread and pull the plank flat side to your feet. Now you exert force with your feet *against the plank*, do your tension/ breathing cycles and then rest for another round. You *do not* force your legs apart by pulling the board back. The force is exerted isometrically against the plank with your feet, your hands are only there to resist enough for it to work.
 

Shoulder
Handbridge: The handbridge described above in this article is great for this. You simply pay more attention to getting your shoulders more above or even a bit beyond your hands while you are up.

Pullovers-Lay on a bench, and incline bench with about 30 deg works great for this. Take a lightly loaded dumbbell or barbell and let it fall comfortably behind your head, do a couple of tension/breathing cycles and let it sink further then bring it back up for a short rest. Don’t use so much weight that you are forcing the issue, just enough to create tension for your cycles. Please use reasonable weights 35-40# is a good weight even for a real strongman. 10-20# will do just fine for most people.

As well as: You can also do similar motions to pullover in a doorframe, or with a bar letting your body fall forward instead of the weight back or by using a bar or towel while standing. The key is the same as always, to try and exert force and control at further ranges of motion. There are nearly infinite possibilities here as long as you are “learning to exert control and force at further ranges of motion” as said before.

Arranging workouts and progression

This is work, every bit as much as doing a long set of deadlifts, presses or max C&J’s. You will get fatigued, you will get sore. If you are either one of those then give it a day and come back fresh, you will not do well at this if you are “trashed”. Remember you are doing a “strength” workout not just “stretching”. This is every bit the same as any other kind of workout. Its also good unless this is your main thing, to do these exercises *after* your regular barbell work. This will mess with your coordination temporarily and fatigue you. You don’t want to have a bar over your head or on your back after you are already tired. Do your high skill lifts or anything where you have an implement over you first.

I like handling this with a “split workout” where I am doing both types of leg splits on one day and then front and backbends on the next. This way there is some recovery time so you aren’t just “cutting a rut” in yourself. Find out by a bit of experimentation how long you take to recover (not "fully", but enough to work competently) and learn to listen to your body and not become a slave to any schedule that doesn’t really suit you. You can also work on every other day with all categories, or even every other day in a split if need be. When things are not going well then take a few days off, you won’t lose anything, in fact you will probably gain some. Learn and make this yours, its not a "recipe" you can just follow and be better merely for showing up.

I think it is also good to pick only one front or backbend, one shoulder exercise and one of both type of split to work on rather than dividing yourself half-hearted among several. Practice on a few good things and really do the work, don’t get “diffused out” so much you lose sight of what you are really working on.

One nice thing about working with flexibility from a strength point of view is that once you are competent and strong in a range of motion, its very easy to maintain. It takes a very long time to lose that range. You can maintain your ROM by just going there every couple of weeks or so. It seems like it is *very* hard to lose what has been gained. You certainly won’t lose it in the time you are on vacation or “on the road”.

Extra and Advanced Applications

This principle can be expanded to applications limited only by your imagination. Suppose for example you are a beginning martial artist trying to kick up to higher levels. One way to do this using the basic principle would be to rig up a device to push against at progressive heights. For example set up a stand with a board you can raise your leg to and push against. Do a couple of pushes and when you can hold your foot against the board for ten seconds or so then raise the board a half inch and repeat the process till you are as high as you want to go eventually. What you are doing is as stated before, simply trying to exert force and control at progressively greater ranges of motion. An even more advanced application of this would be to use the leg cuff to add weight to your leg and then doing the same slow push against the board at progressively greater heights or doing slow controlled lifts to full ROM. In either case you are training yourself to exert force and control at progressively greater ROM’s. Imagine what you kick could be like if you are actually accelerating and applying force through the entire rom instead of just “flailing”.

For advanced splitting you can get your feet up on blocks and work isometrically or try “scissoring up” from the floor with dumbbells or plates in hand. You can have your feet up higher and do isometrics with weights while holding position suspended etcetera. It’s the same principle as before, just more creative applications to keep the “party” going.

Once you have the basic idea, the sky is the limit. And it is a very basic idea, I am not writing anything “new” here its all been around; just nobody except for a few people have ever made much of it. Thomas Kurz sure did, and Pavel Tsatsouline is a variation on a “similar” theme but it never seems to have caught on in a sea of books coming out every few minutes on passive stretching based on the false idea that humans and rubber bands are physically equivalent. In some old articles from muscle writers back in the early part of the century and through the fifties you get the impression they understood the connections between strength and flexibility also but never quite “went there”.

Many writers are so obsessed with the idea of forcing themselves and others into “positions” that we forgot that it is important to be able to actually do something there, not just “sit” but be able to come back out, to go further in, to simply be able to move while there etc. not just statically “stretch”.

Dancers and Martial artists I think falsely attribute their flexibility to passive stretching but I think they forget that most of the time they spend working on their art they are working on “exerting force and control at greater ROMS’ whether they are actually thinking about doing it or not. Its what they are doing that makes them better at what they are doing, not the passive stretching. If you take this principle and enhance it with what we know about progressive resistance training then all the better; flexibility and strength training wind up not as opposites but as compliments that aid each other in a way greater than the sum of their parts.