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Ah yes, flexibility, the most popular part of an exerciser’s program. Wait a minute! No it’s not! It’s actually probably the least popular part of someone’s program. Why is this? Is it because it’s just more time you have to spend in the gym? Maybe it’s because it’s “painful”? Is it a waste of time? Some of these are probably the reason flexibility is generally the most neglected part of someone’s exercise routine, but flexibility should really be a very integral part to the program. I’ll admit, I sometimes don’t spend as long addressing flexibility in my own workout as I should, so I’m talking to myself as much as anyone else.

So what is flexibility? Flexibility is the range in which your joints are able to move. For example, if you’re inflexible in your hips, then you mostly likely can’t touch your toes while keeping your legs straight. To improve flexibility, we need to regularly implement a stretching routine to stretch our muscles out and make them more flexible.

Improving flexibility has many benefits. Some of these benefits include decreasing the risk of injury, correcting muscle imbalances, improving power and speed, decreasing the risk of muscle cramping, and improving balance. As I talked about a while back, before beginning an exercise program, it’s necessary to correct any muscle imbalances you have. For example, having rounded shoulders means the chest needs to be stretched out because it’s tight. By correcting muscle imbalances, your body is able to perform more efficiently. If your body is more efficient in workouts, it means you will be able to develop power and speed easier. It also means you will achieve weight loss/muscle gain faster. If you don’t correct muscle imbalances, then one muscle could inhibit another muscle from working properly; this could lead to injury and poor results in your workout. 

A perfect example of a tight muscle inhibiting another muscle can be demonstrated in this nifty experiment. While standing nice and tall, squeeze your butt together. Next, bring your right knee up toward your chest, and try to squeeze your butt together again. What happens? You may be able to squeeze the left side together, but you can’t squeeze the right side. This is because the muscles connecting to the front of your hips are tight, which keeps the muscles behind your hips, your butt muscles, from contracting. Imagine if you try to develop a proper exercise program without correcting muscle imbalances like this one; you definitely wouldn’t achieve optimal results. 

As I said earlier, flexibility decreases the risk of injury and increases balances. An example of this would be a tree swaying in the wind. If the tree is rigid and has no give to it, it’ll eventually snap and fall over. The same can be said with us. If we don’t increase our flexibility and allow for a greater range of motion for our muscles to move through, we risk tearing the muscle and we wouldn’t have any give in our bodies to allow for increased balance.

Finally, how does increased flexibility lead to better results? Good question.   By increasing your flexibility, you’re enabling your muscles to be able to work through a greater range of motion. For example, a lot of people are unable to keep both heels on the ground while performing a squat into a position with their legs parallel with the floor. Imagine if the flexibility in the back of the legs was good enough to where they could perform this task?  By increasing flexibility, you’re able to work your muscles through a greater range of motion (correctly squatting to a parallel position, for example), which in regards to weight loss means you’ll be able to burn more calories since your muscles are working for a longer period of time. In regards to muscle gain, your muscles will be able to move weight through a greater range of motion, meaning faster muscle gain rates. The same can be said for strength gains.

Regarding the aspect of speed, let’s look at running. If your joints are able to move through a greater range of motion, wouldn’t it seem that with each step, you’d be able to cover more ground? That’s exactly what it means. Having poor flexibility is like dragging a ball and chain while running. Increase flexibility, and you remove the ball and chain. You won’t have those tight muscles holding your joints back from moving through a greater range of motion. Besides running, this can be applied to any type of movement. 

So we’ve covered increased flexibility leading to better speed and better strength; well, the definition of power is the speed at which strength can be applied. So you’d think putting two and two together, increasing strength and speed would mean increasing power. Right? You got it! 

Flexibility is a detail that seems useless, but by spending just 10 minutes, after your workout, working on flexibility can lead to some great results in your program. Now that we’ve covered the importance of flexibility, next week I’ll share with you different techniques for improving flexibility. 

Dan Falkenberg is the co-founder and co-owner of Your Live Trainers. He can be reached at DanFalkenberg.com.

Tags: flexibility, program design