Reflections on Flexibility Training Teaching

The biggest misunderstanding of flexibility training has never been "insufficient tensile strength and insufficient time", but that it ignores individual differences and promotes unified teaching. This lazy method will not only make 70% of the training useless, but also cause nearly one-third of the practitioners to suffer from chronic joint capsule relaxation and soft tissue micro-injury.

Last week I just picked up a junior high school kid who was practicing long jump. He used to press his legs every day with the team at the sports school, and he followed others' static hip flexion and hold for 30 seconds. After two months of training, his groin hurt so much that he didn't even dare to jump hard. When I evaluated him, I discovered that his acetabulum was born with an anterior tilt of 15 degrees, which was a full 10 degrees larger than the normal angle for ordinary people. Others did this to pull the hamstring muscles, but for him, it was a complete pull on the hip joint capsule. Half a dime of training had no effect, and he also accumulated a lot of strain. To be honest, with this kind of innate structural difference, if you use a unified training template to apply it to people, it would be strange if there are no problems.

Speaking of this, when I participated in industry exchange meetings two years ago, I discussed the issue of stretching standards with practitioners in different fields. An old teacher who has taught yoga for 20 years insists that static stretching must be held for more than 1 minute to fully loosen fascial nodules and improve shoulder and waist pain in sedentary people. ； Friends who engage in competitive sports rehabilitation rebutted on the spot, saying that NSCA's guidelines clearly stated that stretching before an explosive event should not exceed 30 seconds, otherwise muscle strength output would drop by more than 10%, and the day's training would be in vain. The two argued for half an hour with no result. In fact, they were both right, but one was serving office workers who wanted to relieve back pain, while the other was serving sprinters who wanted to improve their performance. Their needs were so different, how could there be a unified standard?

I have committed this kind of rigid problem before. When I first started teaching, I memorized the warm-up procedures in the textbook by heart. No matter whether the students came for strength training or boxing classes, they should first perform static leg presses for 3 minutes. Later, a sister who ran a marathon told me that after practicing with me for a month, her legs always felt heavy when running and her pace dropped by two minutes. I went back and read the literature for a long time before I realized that there is no need for static stretching to warm up for long-distance endurance events. Dynamic lunges and hip circles are enough to activate the joints. Static stretching is only suitable for relaxing after class. My process is completely unhelpful.

Another time, I was even more impressed. When I opened the shoulder of a soft-looking girl, and she complained that it hurt, I half-jokingly said, "The pain is effective, just bear with it for another 10 seconds." Three days later, she sent me an MRI report, which showed that the rotator cuff was slightly damaged. It turned out that she had a history of shoulder dislocation when she was a child. I didn't ask about the medical history before class, and I applied pressure to her as hard as an ordinary person, which directly pulled out the old injury. In the end, I paid more than 2,000 for physical therapy, and I felt guilty for half a year.

Nowadays, there is always a debate on the Internet about whether stretching should hurt or not. One group says that "no pain means practicing in vain", and the other group says that "pain is a sign of injury and should be stopped immediately." When I meet people who ask this question, I always ask them to explain clearly what kind of pain it is: soreness, swelling, and stretching pain are normal. Yes, the sharp, needle-like pain stopped immediately. Everyone's pain threshold is very different. I didn't feel a bit sore until I lowered the crossbar to 180 degrees. Some students' legs were shaking when they were raised to 90 degrees. They have already done enough training, and having to press down is pure torture.

Don't tell me, I have encountered a student who was too flexible and had problems before. She could move the fork horizontally or vertically at will, but she always complained of back pain. After evaluation, it was found that her sacroiliac joint range of motion was twice that of ordinary people, her core strength was weak, and her joints would become dislocated with the slightest movement. Such people do not need to practice stretching at all. Instead, they need to do less extensive stretching movements and practice more plank support and dead bugs to stabilize their core. I heard an old coach say before that he had been coaching athletes for 30 years and never stretched the players who were naturally weak. Instead, he watched them practice strength training. Now that I think about it, this is really based on experience.

To put it bluntly, the stretching exercises in many venues' warm-up procedures are based on the old templates from ten years ago. The coaches are too lazy to change or evaluate them. They just ask you to press your shoulders and legs. This is purely to fool people. This thing is like buying clothes. How can everyone be given an M size? Some people are slouchy in S, and some are still tight in XL. The teaching of templates is essentially lazy.

Now, before class, I will spend 10 minutes to find out the students' situation: whether they have any old injuries, what their usual exercise habits are, what their goals are this time, and then simply measure the range of motion of a few key joints before customizing a stretching plan. The longer I work in this industry, the more I feel that there are no universal training standards. All methods have to be applied to specific people to be meaningful. Before, I always thought about training students’ flexibility to industry standards, but now I feel that the best is the one that suits the person and is comfortable and does not hurt after practice.