Flexibility Progression

It's to be said that when you start out not so flexible, it's hard to become flexible. Well, it depends on how you work on becoming flexible. Starting out cold, and stretching until your warm enough to stretch just doesn't cut it because over time you'll get tired of having to wait so long to get all warm and then you'll have other things to do because it's taking too much time and work on your behalf. So I'll offer some tips on becoming flexible.

Whenever you say flexibility to somebody, they usually think along the lines of splits, you know, leg flexibility, which a lot of people lack. But having flexibility in just the legs is kind of stupid when you can be flexible and many other places if you think about. Right?

   So why not work on becoming flexible in other places? Why not do something that a lot of people don't think to do?

   Now like I said, you've got to be warm before stretching. Get some good lower body cardio in before stretching your legs. In honest opinion, I find the legs to be the hardest part of the body to stretch because it's more painful training for splits than it is for say air chairs or flag freezes.

   When stretching your upper body, it's a little different, going for a run or something won't do because that's your lower body and lower core that you're stretching. Warm up everywhere, yes, good idea, but generally speaking, if you're getting into shoulder flexibility for hollow backs, flag freezes, or airchairs, and general flexibility, give your upper body a bit of a work out. Enough to make it warm, not to exhaust it since you'll probably be using your remaining strength in only a matter of minutes.

   My favorite exercise to warm up with is push ups. Before a shoulder stretching routine, I'll crank out a few push ups for some additional light warming up, and then a few handstand and planche push ups for the heavy warm up.

   But it all depends on your style of warming up, find which exercise works best for you, get the blood flowing in your muscles, and then do advised stretches for whatever feat of strength or flexibility your trying to accomplish.