Flexibility

Flexibility is a vital part of your overall fitness. Simply defined, flexibility is the ability to flex, extend, or circumduct your joints through their full range of motion. Because a flexible joint has the ability to move through a greater range of motion, you are much less likely to become injured in the course of your everyday activities and sports.

You can release muscular tension and improve flexibility by a technique known as Self-Myofascial Release (SMR), using the foam roller. SMR works when you put pressure on a tight, tender area of the muscle, activating tiny sensing mechanisms located at the muscle-tendon junction. When pressed, these sensors, called golgi tendon organs (GTO), stimulate the muscle spindles to relax the muscle in question, helping adhesions to release, blood flow to increase to the area, and the quality of the tissue to improve.

The foam roller and static stretching go hand in hand; the roller helps you remove restrictions, and then static stretching helps you restore the muscle to its proper length. Because restrictions are removed, the muscle is ready to be stretched after foam rolling.

Imagine a rubber band that has a knot tied in it. If you try to stretch a rubber band that has a knot in it, the band will most likely break at the point where the knot is. Once the knot is removed however, you can stretch the band without causing a break. Muscles are like rubber bands; knots in the muscle are likely to cause tears and stop lengthening, so getting the knots out first with the foam roller allows them to elongate on stretching.

The SMR technique involves finding the painful spot and putting pressure on painful areas for about 30 seconds using the foam roller. During this time, you are consciously relaxing the area and releasing the knot, adhesion, or dense tissue. This takes focus and patience, especially if you have many painful spots and have not been stretching or doing activities to keep your muscles relaxed and elongated. But you’ll notice that your efforts quickly pay off in available range of motion immediately following an SMR session.

In the above photo, my client Krista is demonstrating the SMR technique by using the foam roller on her Piriformis muscle. You can begin this stretch by crossing one foot over your opposite knee, as shown, and rolling on your posterior hip.

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Once you have rolled your muscles, perform static stretches to lengthen muscles and surrounding fascia tissue for improved quality of movement. Poor postural habits can cause your muscles and the connective tissue that surrounds them to shorten and mold into the positions you maintain throughout your day (like the rounded shoulders that develop from spending too many hours in front of a computer). Stretching these short, tight muscles helps lengthen the muscle, which then allows the body to realign the soft tissue structures, making it a lot easier to maintain good posture.

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Many people prepare for their training by performing static stretches prior to their workout. While stretching helps to improve (non-moving) flexibility, it may not do such a good job at preparing your body to move quickly and efficiently. That’s why I recommend joint mobility exercises, such as jumping rope, to loosen up before working out or competing in sports. Dynamic mobility exercises prepare your body for the vigorous movements that make up the more demanding part of your training or sports.

An excellent mobility drill is joint rotations. Start by standing with your arms hanging at your sides. Then rotate each of the following joints slowly in both directions, about eight times each direction… neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees and ankles.

To sum up: Use mobility exercises when your warm-up and then after your workout or sports competition, perform static stretches as part of the cool-down to restore tissue length and prevent long term injury. Static exercises help bring the body back to a state of rest and recovery and allow you to focus on relaxing and lengthening the muscles that you just put under stress while exercising or playing sports.