The FlexibilityRx™ Blog

www.FlexibilityRx.com

You know that feeling you get when you ‘PR’ your lift – your timing is just right, the movement seems effortless, the bar traveling in a perfect path…

It’s sometimes hard to reproduce that state – it’s like hitting a jump-shot from mid-court and then being asked to immediately do it again, two more times.

Whether your motivation in the gym is – excelling at LIFE, improving your FITness, or testing your limits during SPORT, the goal is the same.  To quote Moshe Feldenkrais, “Make the Impossible Possible, the Possible Easy, and the Easy Elegant.”

Regardless of what you do during your training, no matter how good your programming, your effort, or your consistency, the biggest factor in re-producing the ‘Perfect’ Squat – consistently – is what you do immediately before and after you workout.

If going into your workout you know you have trouble ‘keeping your knees’ out, its TOO LATE to improve that position.  While you should be utilizing relevant cues and actively driving your knees out during your movement, if you have a positional restriction – a flexibility limitation, you need to address that component of your squat pre-workout.

The Perfect’ Squat
Your ability to receive the bar in the snatch, keeping your elbows up in the clean, keeping your weight back on your heels – is how you should critique your flexibility.  The overhead squat is the ultimate test of flexibility, the question remaining is, how can I improve my OHS and ‘PR’ my lift?

Forget about trying to touch your toes in a forward bend and forget about the stretches that your P.E. teacher taught you in grade school.

Taking Bob Anderson’s classic stretching book to aerobics class if fine – but if you’re lifting weight in the gym your 80’s style headband and sweatpants stretching isn’t going to help your workouts.

Having the right FOCUS, DIRECTION, and PROGRESSION to guide your stretching is what a flexibility-training program is all about.  This blog will provide you with the why, where, when, and how of effective flexibility training – stretching will no longer be something you “should do more of”, it will become an essential tool to increasing your STRENGTH, SPEED, and POWER for your workouts.

Performance Based Flexibility Training

“Stretching that creates an instant and dramatic impact on the range of motion, quality of movement, and the strength, speed, endurance, and skill of the movements performed in your workouts.”

This Blog will Outline:

• How to develop the ‘Perfect Squat’
• How to develop the ‘Perfect Press’
• A three -phase approach to developing flexibility-strength
• A formula to turn flexibility into performance (PR-Formula)
• A method of stretching called FLOW
• A method of assessment called PASS
• Three stretch routines: squat, press, and recovery
• A unique ‘FLOW’ stretch routine for pre-workout
• A new definition of flexibility
• The science behind stretching and flexibility (provided by Stretch to Win™)
• The why, when, where, and how of effective flexibility training

And much more!

To get started – here is a sequence called the ‘Core-Four’ Lower Body Stretch Matrix:

Use this routine before your workout (takes less than 5-minutes) and for recovery as needed.  These four stretches have the greatest impact on lower body flexibility in regard to developing the ‘Perfect’ Squat.

‘Stretch of the Week’
Check-in weekly for the ‘Stretch of the Week’  – stretches selected from the SquatRx, PressRx, and RecoveryRx stretch routines that will have a DRAMATIC impact on your workouts.

– Kevin J. Kula (Creator of FlexibilityRx™)

Tags: flexibility training, flexibilityrx, stretching