Flexibility & Mobility

Master Victor: [00:00:00] Do you want to kind of speak about how flexibility and mobility are important and what the difference

Sure. So flexibility usually pertains to taking a part of your body through like a passive range of motion. Right, so sort of like If I were to take Victor’s arm and how far can I like move it in a certain direction before it just kind of doesn’t go any further, but mobility means you’re able to like actively mobilize part of the body or the tissue in the desired direction. So if you just become flexible, like we talked about before, you might have to be more prone to injury. You’re not able to actually create optimal joint stability. So it’s actually important to have a balance of strength. And flexibility. So the goal is mobility, but flexibility is a component of gaining a high mobility level.

​[00:01:00]

Master Victor: Welcome back to another episode of The Unlimited You. Hey everybody, welcome back. Today we’re going to be talking about flexibility and mobility. And how they basically impact everything because So, flexibility in martial arts is extremely important. It lets you be able to kick higher.

Especially Taekwondo, there’s a lot of kicks. Even though Taekwondo means the way of the hands and feet, we use a lot of kicks.

Andy Freebird: And

Master Victor: If you have like really tight hamstrings, you’re not going to be able [00:02:00] to do head level kicks. If you have really tight groin, you’re not going to be able to do a head level side kick.

And that, in turn, reduces your mobility. Do you want to kind of speak about how flexibility and mobility are important and what the difference Sure. So flexibility usually pertains to taking a part of your body through like a passive range of motion. Right, so sort of like If I were to take Victor’s arm and how far can I like move it in a certain direction before it just kind of doesn’t go any further, but mobility means you’re able to like actively mobilize part of the body or the tissue in the desired direction. So if you just become flexible, like we talked about before, you might have to be more prone to injury. You’re not able to actually create optimal joint stability. So it’s actually important to have a balance of strength. And flexibility. So the goal is mobility, but flexibility is a component of gaining a high mobility level. So [00:03:00] would you say that

Andy Freebird: you know,

Master Victor: the small muscles that control that movement are essential in mobility? Absolutely. Yeah. So you’re going to find that as you increase range of motion through increasing flexibility, you start to almost like access muscle fibers that you couldn’t. And that’s the best example I could give based on my own experience would be training my chest.

The more that I was able to get better posture, more flexibility, get my shoulders back here where I used to be more rounded. I started accessing more of the fibers here that actually couldn’t activate before when I had more of this internally rotated scapular posture, compressed. They’re not able to be as much interesting. I didn’t think about it like that. And mobility drills are different than flexibility drills as well. Where, you know, for different types of stretching, we have dynamic stretching, static stretching, and ballistic stretching. And mobility drills, like Freebird saying, involves you [00:04:00] actually moving that body part through a specific range of motion.

Mm-Hmm. that requires flexibility, but it’s also utilizing different muscles to move that, that limb or Yeah. Body part. And a lot of times we might add a very small amount of Yeah. You can use like an elastic band or a small freeway to kettlebell something When you do these kinda mobility exercises, the goal is not.

To lift heavy weight. The goal is to activate and strengthen those muscles that are responsible for that particular movement we’re working on. Yeah. do you want to speak a little bit about the difference in dynamic, static and ballistic stretching? Well, I think actually this is one where you have more expertise, actually.

Yeah. So why don’t you break it down? Yeah. So dynamic stretching I would categorize this as, you know, stretching while movement. leg swings That’s probably the biggest one. Like if you’re holding on to something and you’re doing leg swings it’s actually stretching while you’re moving.

And there’s a difference [00:05:00] in your flexibility range while you’re actively using your muscles versus when you’re statically stopped. We do a lot of static stretches in martial arts. Let’s say you’re doing the splits, you’re holding the splits. Right. Versus you’re actively throwing a sidekick up and Yes. We have a lot of drills where you’re laying down on your side and you’re throwing a sidekick like this. And it’s, it’s essentially when you’re still, that’s static stretching. And if you’re stretching while you’re movement, that’s dynamic stretching. Okay. And then you can also integrate partner stretching as well, where it allows you to relax a specific muscle group.

Like let’s say I’m bringing my leg up, I’m going to be utilizing a lot of my hip flexor and my lower abdominal to bring that leg up versus if, and maybe even my arms to pull on it. But if I have someone else helping me, I can completely relax and then that allows me to get into a deeper Absolutely. So this is a big difference in [00:06:00] different types of, stretching and then you have like ballistic stretching, which I’m not too familiar with. We don’t incorporate in our training a lot, but it involves movement, almost like the dynamic stretching and it incorporates a little bit of mobility while you’re utilizing it.

Interesting. Yeah. the stretching there’s a lot of new information in, increasing your flexibility. Yeah. Where traditionally you would hold the position for like three minutes and just hold it. And you would then like go through a series of different exercises. Let’s say I’m trying to get the middle splits. I would do middle splits, frog splits, and then butterfly. Okay. And you’re trying to work on the Dr. Magnus, the corollary and trying also probably the outer hip to TFL, these three stretches he’s talking about are really going to open Yeah. And what they found out recently through a lot of studies is you [00:07:00] need to hold a stretch for minimum 40 seconds and doing it.

at least three to four times, 40 seconds up to about a minute or two. Yeah. And let’s say you, so you’re doing the splits, you get as far as you can and you’re using that and you do it three to four times and you only need to do that once a week and you’ll see the same amount of progress as if you actually do it two or three times a Got you. And if I’m not mistaken, based on this, what kind of research I looked The longer that you can comfortably hold this stretch, the better, like that will accelerate the tissue becoming more pliable. But if you can’t make it to a full minute, like do only go 30 seconds, like do that. Exactly. And then the more you do it, the easier it will get eventually as your muscle fibers and your ligaments get more used to that lengthening. Yeah. And so what you’re talking about is actually called tissue it’s, the tissue is actually lengthening

Andy Freebird: over time. Yeah.[00:08:00]

Master Victor: When I went I think I mentioned last episode, I went and did a hot yoga, tried that.

I would like to try new things. And what I noticed the next day was that I had a very accelerated tissue creep, where my ability to actually pass my arm up overhead like this dramatically improved. like, Oh my gosh, like actually the tissue has lengthened and I can just easily do this now.

Interesting. What do you think that came think it was the combination of heat and humidity.

Andy Freebird: with

Master Victor: the flexibility and mobility that really Accelerated the tissues

Andy Freebird: tissue’s ability

Master Victor: not only become pliable but also to heal and Because you know that tissue in order to become more stretchable essentially like it needs to accrete more Yeah.

We know it’s like we talked about the nutrition episode. blood flow probably also helped to heal too. Yeah. I think that’s really important that that blood flow and that heat aspect where, you know, cold muscle is like a, a really old rubber [00:09:00] band. doesn’t want to move. And if you stretch it too hard, too fast, it’s going to break and rip versus a warm muscle is like a really loose and new rubber banding and pull that thing out and stretch it.

It’s just going to laugh at you.

Andy Freebird: And.

Master Victor: You know, this is, this comes into really big play, especially when you’re training martial arts. You’re going to be throwing all these head level kicks, you’re going to be feeling it and extending all of these ligaments, all of these muscles, and it’s really important to do dynamic stretching before your exercise.

Yeah. And I think you mentioned this in our calisthenics strength training episode, where if you do stretching, especially static stretching before your exercise, you’re actually going to see a negative effect in your strength output. Yeah. So temporarily you’re going to see this reduction because the elasticity of the muscle has been reduced.

But I think it would also stay in a reason that over time, if you’re over prioritizing stretching and you’re not actually [00:10:00] strengthening the tissue, the muscle is going to become inherently you want to save static stretching for like a totally another day or at the very least after at the end of the workout. And you want to do the dynamic before, like Victor’s saying, part of the reason you want to do that is it’s also a neuromuscular engagement It’s helping you wake up that part of your body where you’re trying to generate power in the case of a punch or a kick. Yeah, absolutely. we do this for injury prevention mainly when you’re cold and you have to do these very dynamic movements the muscle isn’t ready, you’re not sending the energy to it, it’s cold.

You’re more likely to pull something, to rip something, than you are after you’ve done squats, after you’ve done some of that dynamic stretching. Then you are, if you just like comes up on the road and you throw a kick, you’re pretty likely to rip something out. Yeah. especially when it comes to the joints is where we [00:11:00] want to have it.

Because the joints don’t get the same blood flow that your muscle tissue does. And this is also true of the connective tissue of the joints, tendons and So it’s extremely important to warm up your shoulders and hips and spine primarily, and then followed by the the elbows, and then followed by the. Yeah. And especially when you have younger people training, they, we do these hip rotations, knee rotations and shoulder rotations. Yeah. Like, why are we doing this? I don’t feel it. And it’s like, I always thought that part was fun, right? Yeah. I didn’t really know why we were doing it. Yeah.

And then like, you get to be, you know, mid twenties and your thirties and you’re like, Oh, feel my hips now. Oh, okay. That’s been doing a lot. Dude, my hip was so bad for like years and it wasn’t until I started incorporating regular hip rotations. It’s a movement called a hip car, there’s a lot of ways to do it, controlled articular rotation that it, you know, after a couple of years of doing that consistently and went away completely.

Interesting. It’s flagged me for [00:12:00] years. I would feel it every step. Wow. Yeah.

Andy Freebird: And

Master Victor: there’s actually research where you do a rotation in a specific joint, let’s say you’re doing your elbow like this you do that rotation eight times going one direction and then eight times going the other direction, it releases a lubricant fluid in your joint.

It’s called the synovial fluid. Oh yeah. And that helps reduce the friction in your joint. And also helps prevent injuries. So that’s another reason why we do a lot of these dynamic stretching movements before we go into our training. And that way you can move way easier if you can just, you know, you can do that with your neck side to side with your shoulders, elbows, any one of your movement joints, your ankle, if your ankles really sore and you do some ankle rotations, it’s going to start to lubricate all of those little joint areas.

And it’s gonna let you move Yeah, and like I said in a previous episode, I learned this the hard way with climbing, that I hadn’t considered that my fingers are a series of [00:13:00] So, one day, I went to the climbing gym and said, I don’t want to really warm up slowly today, I want to try just going at something hard, right off the bat, and I got a finger injury.

The only one and only time that I had a finger, and that was how it happened. So now I’ve learned warm up slowly, with even the hands, even the fingers. think for me it was summer camp. So, a lot of martial arts schools, they’ll have summer camp and you know, we take them to like six flags, took all our kids to six flags.

And you know, they’re, they’re like eight years old, running around the water park. They wanted to play tag. I’m out there. I hadn’t warmed up or anything. I’m just out there with them after these kids. And changing directions and all the next thing you know, I’m like, I pulled my back. I’m like, I’m gonna go sit down.

Y’all, y’all have fun. Yeah. Like I didn’t warm up and you know, the older we get, the more likely these injuries are likely to happen. That’s really interesting that you point that out. And I like that, you know, your explanation about synovial[00:14:00] which by the way, you know, crack your knuckles,

Andy Freebird: That’s actually if I,

Master Victor: believe it’s the movement of that fluid like rushing in and out of the space of the But what’s happening is this, as we get, as we get older, our body’s ability to maintain water composition decreases, basically your body almost starts to like dry out the older you And so that’s a big part of why warming up and keeping your joints healthy is more and more important as you Yeah. Even in your muscles and skin, all your tissue is better at holding water when you’re

Andy Freebird: younger.

And,

Master Victor: know, this is also really important for recovery. So let’s say you exercise, you don’t know, like a lot of hamstring stretches or hamstring workouts, hip raises.

Maybe you got on that like curl machine and you’re feeling that tightness in your hamstring, right? stretching is gonna help lengthen and pull those muscle fibers and reduce the soreness that you feel, especially if you do it after your exercise. And [00:15:00] What it’s especially going to do is it’s going to prevent your muscles from shortening because after you exercise they’re going to get bulkier, they’re going to get bigger as they heal.

And if you don’t stretch after your workout or maybe the next day or two, then it’s going to increase the likelihood of it shortening reducing your mobility and flexibility. So, not only Does stretching help the recovery and you’re not feeling a sore, but it helps the recovery and lengthening the muscle fibers and then healing in a longer format.

It’s a really great point because like I talked about, if you only focus on becoming more flexible, you’re going to run into problems because you don’t have the strength to really stabilize your joints. Like Victor pointed out, the opposite is If you over prioritize hypertrophy and strength, you don’t work on your flexibility at all, you’re going to be very limited in mobility because as the muscles get thicker in hypertrophy, they’re actually becoming shorter fibrously.[00:16:00]

So one of the things you can do in addition to stretching after is do exercises that almost incorporate If I do a hamstring curl like in Victor’s I like to set the weight low enough. that I can adjust the machine to get the best stretch possible. I want every rep, when my leg is out here, I want to feel this whole hamstring stretching first.

So the higher I can set the machine up here, more stretch than if I had a bend or I have it down here. Now, in order to do that, you have to make the weight lighter. The same thing with a bench press. Like barbell bench press, not a deep Dumbbell bench press, light enough that you can control it, come all the way down here.

Oh, you’re going to feel that stretch. A lot of my mobility in my upper back and shoulders has come from prioritizing stretching my chest on exercises like the bench press or pack fly and that’s Probably one of the biggest areas I would say most people have an issue with because not only how we sit, we all kind of go like this.

We’re on our phones [00:17:00] allowing yourself to open up that chest is going to become so critical and your posture and your mobility and your quality of life and breathing impacts so many things. We don’t even think about even prepping on the heart. Like you have, you know, a certain distance between the sternum.

And the spine, which can be decreased or increased depending on the skeletal Yeah, so if you’re internally rotated and your chest is caved in, you’re actually putting more pressure on the heart. that’s making it work harder, it’s more compressed, that’s a good So, stretching not only has preventionary measures for, preventing injury, recovery, but also everyday benefits that can improve your quality of life, improve your flexibility and your mobility.

And that comes down to, you know, can you get up off of your chair without using your hands? Yeah. You know, can you get up off of the ground without using your hands? Yeah. You know, this is essentially becomes very critical to aging, you know, to aging [00:18:00] gracefully because as you age, you start losing muscle mass, you start losing that mobility.

You lose bone density too. That’s critical. don’t have good mobility and you fall down, you’re way more likely to break a bone than when you were young. Yeah, that could be, take you months to heal because your recovery time is already It could literally be actually really elderly once they have a fall, a high percentage of those people die within the next couple of years.

Because then they’re not moving as well. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Like everything else just goes downhill. Yeah.

Andy Freebird: And

Master Victor: maintaining a good level of flexibility and mobility is going to help you heal faster because you’re allowing more blood to get into the different parts of your body. You know, I have noticed that too.

Yeah. You know, I injured my knee, tendon in my knee was what, four weeks ago, I could barely bend my neck like here and I’m now walking without a limb [00:19:00] and it’s only been four weeks. Yeah. And, this is across the board when I get sick, I heal faster. So, you know, stretching and maintaining mobility has significant impacts throughout my entire lifestyle that, you know, I wouldn’t have thought when I think for me, the biggest one is more mobility that I have, the more I work on my flexibility and mobility training, the less I notice any kind of discomforts. like what I’ll do is I’ll have these moments of realization of like, Huh, I haven’t felt any kind of aches or pains today at all.

It’s like the, you know what I’m saying? This almost like blissful ignorance you get from not worrying about, Oh, my hip aches, my back aches like, you know what I mean? I can’t bend down and tie my shoe. Like you just don’t even think about that stuff anymore. That’s a good point. Yeah. And. You know, especially in martial arts, if you don’t have that mobility, you’re not going to be able to perform certain techniques properly.

It’ll be impossible. Like, if you have really tight [00:20:00] hips, you’re not throwing an outside crescent, your leg can’t even go over there. Exactly. Even if I grabbed your leg, if I had to pull it over there, you’d be like, ouch, stop. It wouldn’t even move over there. Yeah. And for a lot of the students that I’ve had who have really short hamstrings, that’s kind of the biggest one for the kicks.

They’re, they compromise their body Rotate more. Yeah, and what ends up happening is after their kick, they’re more vulnerable to an Because their body position, their dactyl positioning has changed. They can’t put in as much power or speed into that technique Right. Because the technique, just in doing it properly, allows you to do it faster and deliver more power into it.

In how you turn the hips, in how you turn the foot, it opens it up a specific way that let’s say if my hips are facing forward and I try to do this kick. I’m not going to get the same as I turn my head and put all of this force that’s coming from the ground into my kick. Right. Yeah. Just like a punch.

It’s a kinetic energy chain and you want that to be as efficient as possible to direct [00:21:00] that energy where it needs to go. Exactly. And that is entirely reliant on your mobility. can’t move your leg a specific way, if you don’t have the muscle and the range of motion. You can’t deliver those or if you do, like you said, they’re very low in power and you’re going to be way more vulnerable would.

Yeah. And then some people will really just focus on learning these techniques and forget like, Oh, Hey, I really have to lengthen my hamstrings to be able to kick and they don’t see that importance in how it affects themselves and other aspects of their life and especially in their training. And they don’t ever focus on that.

That’s a big judgment. I think to, to. the training lifestyle,

Andy Freebird: you know, yeah

Master Victor: I think you’re probably right that the hips probably are the most important. Like the hamstring, the hips, probably the most important part of the body for. Taekwondo being that there’s all of these kicks. I mean, you don’t need a ton of upper body flexibility to deliver most of the hand strikes.

Yeah. It’s all kind of, some of these [00:22:00]kicks will literally be impossible for you if you don’t have good hamstring flexibility, good hip flexibility, good groin flexibility. Absolutely. Absolutely.

​you know, lately I think you probably have seen some of these videos of animal flow. Yeah, I have. Yeah. [00:23:00] Where a lot of people are working on.

Mobility through this animal flow. I love to play around with that kind of

Andy Freebird: of stuff

Master Victor: and when I go out on the trail or I go out on the climbing wall, I feel more like an animal like a panther and it feels so biomechanically fluid. You This is one of the reasons I love brazilian So for our brazilian jiu jitsu warm up, we do you. We call it like the animals. So you do

Andy Freebird: the monkey.

Master Victor: Yeah, I’ve done that one. You do the alligator. I’ve done that one. The bear. Sometimes they call it. The shrimp, I need to do more shrimping because I know that’s like a big BJJ thing. Yeah. Yeah. And all of these work on your mobility and how your body’s moving and you learning how to utilize different muscles.

To get your body to in different positions too. Exactly. On your back, on your side, on your stomach. How do you get out of that? Well, there’s a really weird mobility one I like to do sometimes, which is like a head pull basically. do, you lay down on your back. You got to be laying on [00:24:00] something soft, like a carpet or grass outside, put your occipital notch on the ground, and you just look up and then inch a little bit.

You just do it again. You can actually move completely across the ground just only using your head. Yeah. Yeah, okay. It’s almost like an upside down inchworm. Yeah. Yeah. Essentially. Yeah. Just get good at moving every possible position with any possible point of contact. And you’re just going to be that much more fluid.

Exactly. And this kind of comes back to the thing. Something you mentioned in the first episode where The human body has a such a large array of possibilities and the ways we can move infinite, and it’s all about our creativity, know, and our flexibility and our ability to get our bodies ready to be able to perform those and safely like you pointed out, don’t, you know, pull your back chasing some kids at the

Andy Freebird: theme park with

Master Victor: You could have just warmed up and then you probably would have been smoking these kids.

You know what I mean? Like I got way longer legs than a little kid. Yeah. I was smoking them until I got hurt. And [00:25:00] now I’m done. I’m going to sit this one out. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I think one of the biggest important things in our mobility is, we don’t work at it, like all the other things we’ve been talking about, you end up losing it.

Your body doesn’t, But the importance in maintaining either the length of those fibers or the strength in that area. So mobility is something we constantly have to work at, you know, can, can like from a seated position. Can you get down into a yogi squat where you’re basically seated on your feet like this?

Can you get up from that area? That’s probably one of the biggest things that a lot of people neglect is like, can you even get up without using Yeah, so there’s certain aspects of mobility that are much more, like, than others. So the two main ones are going to like, yeah, can you squat down to the ground and pick something up?

Or can you bend over [00:26:00] and pick something up without feeling Yeah, exactly. Without feeling back pain or it could be your ankles. A lot of the times people that can’t squat to the, to the floor. Usually their heels will lift up and it’s because they actually can’t dorsiflex the foot and ankle.

They can’t go like this all the way. They’re kind of locked here.

Andy Freebird: So

Master Victor: that would be the most practical. There’s other forms of flexibility that are going to have health benefits, but for the average person aren’t as important. For example, being able to bridge backward. You almost never need to do that. But if you’re doing jujitsu or something, you you know, like suplex or something like that. Yeah, you better be able to do that. Umpah, roll them over. But it’s way more important for most people to just be able to bend forward. Because have our eyes in front of us, our hands in front of us. We walk forward. know, why are you bending over? I gotta pick this thing off, I gotta tie my shoe.

That’s more important. Absolutely. And these different movements. know, especially like the people who dance, especially creative dancing, what you end up learning through increasing your [00:27:00] mobility is that mind body like, what muscles do I need to use in order to move the Yes. And if you can’t, if you’re limited, the best way to. You know, address that is to get professional help. I think through like a physical therapist or a mobility coach like yourself where they address your inability to move in a specific way, like let’s say you’re always feeling a specific hip pain, maybe you need to literally put a band here and utilize and activate a muscle that you haven’t been using.

It’s a sleep and you’re putting this extra load on, let’s say, like your lower back or, you know, your gluteus minus. And what ended up happening is like, you’re going to end up sitting a specific way. Maybe you’re always sitting like this, you know, your spine is going to be out of line. So our flexibility and our mobility directly [00:28:00] correlates to how we’re.

Yeah. You know, how you sit. Do you have good posture when you sit? Do you, you know, compromise yourself while you’re doing all these activities and working on your flexibility and makes you more aware of how you’re living. You know, like when I sit next to somebody who has a really good posture, I’m like, I need to improve my posture.

Like I’m starting to feel a little bit of back pain, you know? Yeah. And they, I think they do make some feedback devices for that. Wear it around your neck or I think they make one that’s even Essentially I think it vibrates or buzz. Yeah, when you start to kind of, I guess it has maybe an accelerometer in it.

starts to can tell and it like vibrates and you’re like, Oh, go back up straight again. Yeah. what I found really interesting is, you know, you can use strength training. And calisthenics to help improve your posture. Dramatically. Well, if you’ve worked out your chest and you’re all like this, maybe you need to put a little bit more focus in your back so that your, your [00:29:00] posture opens up so that you stretch more of your chest. lot of people will have shoulder injuries or imbalances where, especially if you drive a lot. This is a big one. Those nomads out there. Yeah. Like you’re sitting and you’re pushing the gas pedal. That right side is extremely used and unbalanced. So you know, you’re not even sitting symmetrically either because you have this leg is more toward the middle and then your other leg is like out here.

It turns your head forward. It turns your head. Yeah. Yeah. And that has consequential effects of it’s going to affect you and how you sleep and how you walk and how you sit outside of the driving. Yeah. And like I personally had pains from driving and we’ve been traveling for the last two years and my hips were not doing good until I really started focusing on them and increasing my hip flexibility, my lower back strength sitting in a better [00:30:00] posture.

Really took out a lot of the pain that I was feeling in the second that I’m not thinking about it and I start to slash more. I started to drive more. I’ll start feeling those pains coming back. Yes, I’ll try to take advantage, you know, in the car, things like cruise control. So I can kind of sit a little bit more symmetrically and know your limits if you get really good at mobility, flexibility, it’s likely that you’ll be able to sit in a position like this a lot longer than someone who didn’t work on that.

Yeah. whoever you are, when you start feeling some kind of tightness in your shoulder or your hip, if you’ve been driving for hours, like, pull off the side of the road, do a couple hip circles, do a couple shoulder circles, get back in. How much time did you waste? 30 seconds. That’s it. But now you feel great, you can drive a few more hours.

Exactly. Yeah. this is especially important on those really long drives. Yeah. And the people who are out there, you know, driving 3, maybe more hours a day. Truckers. like take a [00:31:00] break, you know, you can do a lot of these stretches while you’re sitting, like cross your legs, lean forward, that stretches your lower back, that stretches your upper glute over here, you know, you can do some spinal twists while you’re sitting in your chair.

I like to do this one too, I like to put my ceiling. Yeah. With the opposite hand holding and then I’ll switch and with this hand. That’s so good. Yeah. Yeah. And like these are little things that you can do. Also, one of. My other favorite ones is while I’m sitting, if I’m starting to feel hip pain, I’ll squeeze my

Andy Freebird: butt. Oh, and

Master Victor: squeeze my belly and that helps activate the glute that goes to sleep while you’re sitting.

And then the glute is like your prime mover. So what’s happening is that the hip muscles, like the TFL, those are supposed to be like assisting other muscle groups. You know what I mean? But yet they’re like over activating. activate like the glutes and that prime mover, it makes sense. It would take a lot of that tension like off of these smaller muscle groups. [00:32:00] now you might not be able to hold like that glute for very long. You can like squeeze it and let go and you’ll feel it throughout your whole body. Yeah. And if you’re feeling pain and you do that, you might have some relief for a few minutes and then you go and do it again. And if it comes back, maybe stop stretch it out.

Maybe do a forward fold if you’re able to without having lower back pain. And what’s really important about stretching

Andy Freebird: is

Master Victor: you’re gonna feel pain stretching is painful. Yeah. But there’s a difference between when you stretch and feeling sharp pain versus the stretching pain. It’s like a discomfort.

Yes. More so than a pain. Yes. And if you feel sharp pain, a knife going into that,

Andy Freebird: joint impingement that

Master Victor: you don’t want to feel that you want to immediately back off a little bit and only feel that slight discomfort of the lengthening muscles. that’s going to be a lot safer to I also have found that the more that you practice this. [00:33:00] more you literally and lean into that sensation because you start to identify that that sensation is what’s actually creating the progress when you

Andy Freebird: lean into it. Yeah.

Master Victor: I got a lot of the parents of my, my, my students will. We’ll call me a mask against for this because I’m like, this is that good pain.

Yes. Do it. Let’s go. That’s because my brain has dealt that pain with something that’s good. It’s not necessarily a bad pain. It makes it easier to lean into it. Exactly. It’s, it’s a pain that you want. In order to get something good out of it. Yeah. But the second it becomes sharp, that’s the biggest key. If it’s sharp, you’re probably not doing it right.

Yeah. And a lot of our stretching, a lot of any stretching, the spinal posture becomes Yeah. If you’re slouched in any stretch, it is not good for your the spine is probably one of the most important things you need to take care of while you’re training, while you’re stretching, while you’re moving.

It’s like the main highway of [00:34:00] information in your body. It’s number one. Yeah. As far as the joint structures of the body, the spine is absolutely number one. Exactly. So when you’re stretching, focus on keeping a good spine, you know, open your chest, pull your shoulders back and then, you know, lean and grab your for a seated hamstring stretch.

Unless the goal of that stretch to round the back, right? So sometimes when we’re folding, for example. We want to prioritize more of the hamstrings to do like a seated fold. You want your back to be pretty much straight, but if you’re doing a standing fold, we’re trying to get that mobility in the spine.

Yes, we actually do want to curve back. Yes, And some, some modifications you can do for a standing forward fold is bending the knees. Until your belly touches the top of your legs. Mm-Hmm. . And that’s gonna reduce any pressure in your lower back. Mm-Hmm. . And then you can slowly start to straighten your knees out until that you can do a full forward fold where your chest is down on top of your legs.

Yeah. So a lot of these [00:35:00] stretching techniques, you know, I, I really recommend, you know, go to a yoga class. watch some of our videos and have someone walk you through these stretching routines that actually knows what the heck they’re doing Otherwise you can severely hurt yourself and some of these injuries if you’re stretching correctly, like you could pop a bone out of know, or you could even tear a muscle straight off the bone, too You can rip an actual ligament or tendon and then like you’re gonna be way worse off than you were before you started stretching So stretching well is just as important as stretching.

And, you know, if you’re trying to make progress, you’re definitely going to be stretching longer periods of time. But, you know, let’s say you don’t have time and you only got five minutes, do a little bit of stretching. It’s going to do you way more benefit than not stretching at Yeah, I think also the more you do this, the more you start to notice when you need to stretch and what stretch you need to do.

And you also don’t need to like actually stretch as It becomes almost more of a maintenance [00:36:00] Like at this point, I don’t practice. For example, we’re talking about forward fold. I don’t really practice it every day. I might do it maybe once or twice a day just because I feel like I need it.

And that’s all it takes for me to maintain. You know, at this point, pretty much to put my whole body as well like a while to get there, but it took way more work to get there to maintain it. Exactly. Exactly. And once you get to a specific range. You need to do a little bit of work to make sure you progress.

Yeah, exactly. And that’s really important where if you’re really trying to increase your flexibility, you need to really put focus and time into increasing that whatever exercise you’re doing at least three to four times in a set. If you’re doing the splits and then you’re doing the frog splits and then you’re doing the butterfly, do that three to four times and hold it for at least a minute if you can.

Yeah, and then each time you do it, you should be going further and further by that fourth one. You should be as far as you can go. You should be feeling those [00:37:00] muscles really extended. And it’s gonna be a whole different level of pain than when you first started on that first one. you’re tapping into fibers we couldn’t even reach Exactly. And that’s gonna, that’s what’s really gonna give you that progress because All the ones that were kind of okay tight are now way loose. And now you’re getting into the deeper muscles that really need that work.

That’s pretty much covers like a lot of what the flexibility and mobility aspects. Do you, do you have like any stories or anything you want to share? Well, I guess on what you just said you know, I was reflecting. So I, you know, mentioned a couple of times that hot yoga class. There was one portion where we’re working on backbending, right, like arching backward.

And this is something that I have been working on a lot, particularly in the upper back. People tend to be inflexible in their upper spine too flexible in their lower spine because their lower spine is compensated for how inflexible their upper spine So I’ve been working a lot on making my upper spine

Andy Freebird: And

Master Victor: I noticed [00:38:00] I can’t believe how sore I am in my upper back fibers because I was able to actually access parts of my back activate those muscle fibers that I could never actually access before because I didn’t actually have mobility. So it’s just very interesting how it’s like it’s perpetually a next level to reach.

Right. I also had a question for you that I thought would be a great thing to explain to our viewers. How do you get an ideal headspace for stretching, because it is uncomfortable? And how can you use breath work to assist with, like, getting in that meditative, calm state? Yeah, I was just gonna say the breath work.

Yeah. Like, anytime I stretch, I’m 100 percent focused on my breath. And I actually count my stretches through my breath. So In all the stretches I do, I breathe in through my nose, and out through my mouth, and I’ll go 1, 2, [00:39:00] 3, I forget everything else, and I’m solely focused on my breathing, and that helps everything else relax.

Now, when you get into that stretching state that everything’s really screaming at you, you want to relax the muscles. So like, let’s say I’m doing my splits and I feel people feel it under their knees. Some people will feel it in their growing. Some people feel all the way at the connective tissue inside the hips.

And if you fight it, if you’re squeezing your muscles. You’re not going to be able to open Yeah. So it, you have to bring your mind, you’re focusing on your breath. You have to bring your awareness. Like, where am I feeling that tightness? You feel it. Maybe you even put a hand there where you’re feeling that.

Oh, that’s definitely helps. Yeah. And that helps release. You’re like, Oh, that’s where the tightness is. I, I’m going to focus where my hand is touching. Yeah. And then that lets you [00:40:00] Yeah. Cause once you touch it, it’s a lot easier to sense that area. Exactly. It’s also true of like strength training.

If you like touch a certain muscle, you can feel it solidified. Yeah. So it’s same thing true with getting the muscle to relax. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, if you have plateaued essentially, where you’re not making progress in your stretching, what you can do is add force So let’s say you’re, in the frog splits, so your knees are on the ground and you can’t go wider.

You’re not as wide as you can go. You don’t want to do this like at the max width. Gently. Gently. Very gently. So you want to push your knees into the ground, maybe at medium because you’re already stretched. You don’t want to maximize your strength. You’re going to pull something. Yes. So I’m going to squeeze into the ground for like five seconds and that’s going to bring heat in the muscles.

Yes. And then when I release it’ll open up. And that to release, you have to be aware where it’s tight and be breathing and the breathing really helps you enter that state of [00:41:00] would you say that the tightness sort of a resistance and lengthening is more of a surrender? Like the stretch, it’s almost like you have to like surrender to that discomfort when you see that area.

Do you think that’s a good? Yeah, Absolutely. Especially like if. say you’ve had an injury. Your, your body’s going to be subconsciously tightening that region to protect itself. Yeah. Right. Like I, I have a extremely tight right hip flexor and I’ve actually lightly pulled it multiple times from doing just an extraordinary amount of kicks.

And when I stretch my, my iliac, so I’d group, I have to. Consciously relax it and then I can But when I first go into it, it is like screaming at me. You gotta relax all the surrounding I’m glad you pointed that out too because muscles don’t function independently of one [00:42:00] if you have any kind of tightness in an area, it’s pretty much definitely everything else around it is going to be affected too. think holistically. Yeah. There is one aspect of stretching you didn’t talk about. That I think would be good to mention too, which is that, you know, your muscles kind of have an opposing muscle.

So, for example, the quadricep makes your knee go, extend the leg, the hamstring, the plexus, thing with the bicep or the tricep. So one of the things you can do is actually contract. The opposite muscle and it will lengthen the other one. So let’s say that you’re trying to increase your hamstring flexibility.

You can do pulses where you squeeze your quads for a few seconds and you’ll actually go deeper into the stretch. It will lengthen the hamstring as the quad contracts. Yeah. It’ll force it to stretch. Yeah. Yeah. Essentially, it’s stretching the other muscle by, creating this different. Yeah, and if y’all have any specific [00:43:00] Questions about stretching or you know, what stretches to do we’re gonna be putting out probably by the time this episode airs some different examples of ways you can stretch different muscle groups especially for Injury prevention and rehabilitation. so if you end up not seeing those or you want to get some of those clips, make sure you send us a message, follow the podcast. You can go to our website, ferroacademy. com and you know, get more information, but it’s especially important to create a routine for yourself where you’re taking care of your body, especially as you’re hopefully you all got something good out of this. Make sure you stay tuned for our next episode. We’re going to be going deeper into, you know, speed, precision, mental health, breath, work, and meditation. And let us know if you have any questions. Look forward to seeing y’all next episode. Yeah. If you guys learned something useful you know, like share, subscribe, spread the [00:44:00] info, spread everything that we’re trying to help people with and we’ll see you next time.

​