My experience growing up in Canada as a male was formed by popular catch phrases:
- All or nothing
- Suck it up
- No pain no gain
When I was in my teens and twenties I worked out and focused on building strength, only. I thought it would be cool to be bound up and have little mobility. I would over train and injure myself. I didn’t take care of injuries until I realised that I had to back off training and couldn’t pound my body into the ground anymore.
While injured my impulse before was to crack, pop or jam my body in an effort to alleviate pain or tightness. I see men do this all the time. The problem with that approach is that your body will tighten up the very muscles you are trying to lengthen in order to protect itself. Thereby negating what you are trying to do.
At 36 years old, I realised that I needed to start taking care of myself more. I wanted to retrain my flexibility back to when I was a dancer. I also have a theory that I can break down scar tissue through flexibility training. Research led me to developing the main principal of the DRT method - Sit on the edge of discomfort.
The edge of discomfort is that place in a stretch before pain. You can feel something is being stretched but you don’t have tension in your body (ie.gritting teeth, clenching fists, furrowed brow, etc). Then you sit there for a decent length of time (>1 min)and over that time your body will relax and the muscle will lengthen.
Gains in any training regiment are made with consistant training and specifically with flexibility training you need to be patient. Your body needs to be convinced slowly to lengthen and open up. When you are on the edge and can relax then your target muscles will relax too. There by making gains in flexibility.
The most interesting part of flexibility training for me is that unlike any other type of training your gains come much quicker.
Give it a try.