Gymnastics Flexibility: A Summary Of Best Methods

So this podcast series , this kind of shorter podcast form , is kind of complementing some of the longer form interviews that we've been doing , and in this one I just want to summarize what do you do to get more flexible right ? What should you do ? What exercises , how much should you stretch ?

Should you do anything else with foam rolling or you know all sorts of other things ? What does the research say and how can we summarize this for people ? For what you should do , how many days per week , how many sets and repetitions , how you can help gymnasts get more flexible for hamstrings or shoulder flexibility , hip flexibility , all that kind of stuff .

So my hope is that for new listeners , we're going to just give them a nice little shot of a summary here and they can go deeper down the rabbit hole if they'd like with other podcasts or other articles , or for someone who is returning back to the podcast and is kind of trying to get a quick refresher .

You can just hear my theses and my thoughts around these kind of topics that are important , like flexibility . So I'm going to keep this one short , try to keep it down to 20 to 30 minutes . Nice and brief , so that way people can just enjoy it on their ride to work or on their run .

But I hope you enjoyed this kind of summary episode on gymnastics flexibility . All right , welcome back to these kind of short snippet type podcasts . We're doing here on shifts podcast . So these ones are aimed to summarize and help people with a lot of information in a little amount of time .

So save a lot of time , save a lot of money by just summarizing the things that I think are most important in a certain topic . So , as I got back into doing podcasts , filming new episodes , people enjoy the long form content . They want to go deep dive , they want to hear from guests .

Of course we'll keep doing those , but I also want to make sure that I'm accommodating people who don't want to do 90 minute slogs , and so I enjoy those . I enjoy both , but also I know there's times in my life when I'm looking for information on a certain topic .

I don't have a lot of time I just want to did gymnastics strength conditioning about a half hour long episode on that . So make sure you go check that out . If you missed that one first , this one will be on flexibility .

Okay , so this one is the probably the second to third most common thing everybody asked me about is like how do I get better splits , how do I get better shoulder flexibility , how do I get better ankle flexibility , how do I get my wrist better back flexibility , whatever ?

So I want to kind of summarize the system that I think I've found very , very helpful in the last five years . So the speed run on this is that my traditional gymnastics education was pretty much all just like stretching every day . You know , stretching every day , active flexibility and just keep going , keep going , keep going .

But there wasn't really a rhyme or a reason . Those things weren't really science or evidence based . They were kind of just like passed down from my coach to somebody else and all that kind of stuff , which certainly has merit . I'm not saying that I don't use some of the things , uh and I do .

But as I got through PT school , as I did my sports residency , as I got into the research world , I started to learn that there are many other things inside our arsenal , so to speak , that gymnastics was not using . Uh , we'll talk about in this episode .

And then I also learned that some of the things that we were just doing cause we do them um , maybe weren't the most effective or in some cases we're not the safest .

Okay , so , um , aggressive over splits when kids have hyperlaxed joint capsules and , like you know , not doing soft tissue care or anatomy based specific stretching right , like stretching your lats specifically based on how the anatomy works , versus just like somebody pulling on your shoulders , which is probably more joint capsule related .

Right , same thing with splits Just doing an oversplit right when your hip flexors are very stiff or your groin is very stiff , maybe it's missing the soft tissue and you're just stretching out the joint capsule more and irritating the labrum or something like that . So I learned all the old school stuff , all the things that were important .

Then I learned a bunch of new stuff . I mushed them together , created a bit of a system of how I now work on flexibility with people across the entire sport . Right , literally a college , elite club , recreational , adult gymnastics , tnt , trampoline , you name it . Right , it's the same human body and the same kind of approach to splits or whatever .

So I want to kind of go through the system that I use and summarize a lot of the protocols that I think are most important . So this is applicable if you want a better split , front split , side split , a better back flexibility for a bridge , better shoulder flexibility overhead , all that kind of stuff . It all kind of does circle the same system .

So , number one , the most important thing you have to do start with a screen . Okay , find a physical therapist , an athletic trainer , a chiropractor , a strength conditioning coach , whatever you want to do , do it yourself on screening and screen out what are the reasons why your split is not lower .

Okay , if we just use a split , for an example , a front leg split not going down could be . Could be the front legs . Hamstring could be the front legs nerve could be the back leg . Hip flexor could be the back leg groin could be the back leg hip . Anatomy of the bone structure right , it could be neural tension in the back leg as well .

It could be someone's core control is not good . They have a big anterior pelvic tilt and it doesn't allow them to go down any lower . It could be a billion different things that are not letting someone's legs go into a split right , and if you don't screen out and realize one whether this is something that can be changed or cannot be changed .

Bone structure cannot be changed if you're going through puberty , right , and you're older , nor do we want to change that . But if you don't say , is this fixable , is this not ?

And then you don't screen out hamstring versus quad versus hip flexor versus all that kind of stuff , you're just going to be doing 300 drills you find offline on Instagram over and over and over again , and they may not be working , they may not be actually what you need to do .

So by getting a proper screen and breaking down what the individual need is of you or somebody else , with some very simple tools , you can save yourself an enormous amount of time and energy and headaches .

Okay , so if you want to screen out someone's you know leg raise , for example , lay on your back and do an active straight leg raise , can you get it to 120 degrees , 130 degrees ?

And then do it again with your toe up into a toes up dorsiflexive vision and see if the nerve is the issue of why maybe the nerve , the sciatic nerve , is causing , and then also do what's called a Thomas test .

Right , lie on your back on the edge of a table , hug one knee to your chest , let the other leg go down to see if your hip flexor or your quad is stiff or your TFL is stiff . Maybe the soft tissue is tight there as well .

Do a Faber test , which is when you lay on your back , cross one leg into a figure four with your opposite leg , opposite ankle , on your above your knee , and see if your leg can drift out into a figure four position to be flat and parallel , aligned with the table . See if your adductors are very stiff as well . And then there's other medical tests .

There's a thing called the Craig's test , which looks at some of the bony changes , for are your hips rotated at all ? There's many different options you have for hamstrings , hip flexors , quads , all that kind of stuff . You need to screen these things out and you need to figure out two or three issues to work on .

Okay , so , find a PT , find an AT , find a Cairo , do some YouTube deep dives , do some self-screening , whatever you want to do . But please save yourself the enormous amounts of time and effort by just throwing things against the wall and hope they stick . Okay , number two , once you have a good understanding on .

This is my hip flexor , this is my quad , this is my groin , this is my whatever you do . Want to spend some time on soft tissue work and stretching ? Okay so the summary of the research on stretching is that it works .

Every type of stretching you can think of Maybe mine is like very aggressive , ballistic stretching which might get too intense the vast majority of different stretching techniques do work if they're consistently done . Okay so , static stretching , dynamic stretching , pnf stretching , contract , relax , all that kind of stuff .

It works very well If you do it every single day for at least four to six weeks . Okay , so , say , you find that your split can't go down because your hip flexor is stiff on one side and your hamstrings a little tight on the front side .

Okay so you're going to find , um , some specific stretching work to do , maybe a leg lower for the hamstring right when you lie against the door , jam one that goes up , one leg goes up and down , and you're working on active dynamic stretching of the oh balloons .

You're working on active dynamic stretching of the hamstring right for 10 reps , two sets of 30 seconds for that , and then also you're going to pair that with a wall quad stretch , right , a couch stretch , some people call it . So . Maybe it's going to be a hamstring stretch for leg lowers and a quad stretch for the other one .

You're going to do two sets of 30 seconds every single day , six days a week for four weeks . Okay , and that's what the research supports , is that static or dynamic stretching does work . Two sets of 30 seconds per muscle group is a pretty good starting point .

These long 60 to you know , one to two minute holds doesn't have more effectiveness than the 30 second hold , so we'll just go with that . And that , you know , five to six days per week , seems to be what people need to do to make a significant change in their range of motion .

Okay , so do a screen , figure out what it is , and then we're going to do some specific stretching , right . So , leg lowers , quad stretch , maybe it's a groin one , maybe it's a calf one . We're also going to make sure we do a little bit of soft tissue prep before .

So some foam rolling or some stick massage or a lacrosse ball line things stick massage or a lacrosse ball line things like that . Those things work because they tend to desensitize muscles over time .

They increase blood flow , they increase water content , they do not break up scar tissue , they do not magically change the structure of your muscles and joints and tendons , but we know from research that it does seem to make a positive effect on range of motion if it's consistently done and in tandem with other types of things .

So I would screen yourself , I would get the hamstring and the quad , I would do a specific foam rolling of the quad and maybe the upper groin area because they work as hip flexors too .

I would do 30 seconds of the quad on each side , 30 seconds of the hamstring on each side , and then I would go do a two sets of leg lowers and also two sets of quad stretching against the wall .

Okay , making sure that when you do the quad stretch , for example , you are tipping your pelvis back , you're squeezing your glute , you're leaning forward to make sure it's happening from your hip flexor and your quad muscle , not your hip joint capsule .

Right , with a hip flexor stretch or a quad stretch , if you overarch your back and lean really far into a deep lunge , like many people do in gymnastics , you're probably not getting all of the hip flexor and soft tissue , because the hip flexor starts from the spine and starts on the femur bone .

So we have to make sure we tip the pelvis backwards and hollow our core to get the most to kind of happen out of the soft tissue , right . So even though those deep choreography lunges are cool , we don't want to make sure that we don't want to only do those deep , deep lunges because they might bypass some of the soft tissue .

So you have your soft tissue work , you have your stretching work , okay , the third thing which is very new is that many people have done a little bit of but it's very important to do it specifically is loaded , eccentric strengthening , right

. So strengthening with eccentric overload , so that's when the muscle is slowly getting longer over time , versus like a concentric is curling all the way up .

Um , you have to make sure that you are doing five repetitions of a five second lower in a five second bottom hold with weight or your body weight or a dumbbell or something like that , to make sure that you are getting an overload .

So while soft tissue work and stretching maybe doesn't change the actual muscle length itself , we know that it kind of desensitizes nerves , increases some blood flow , increases some hydration or water content , which does help get range of motion over time . We see that in studies , eccentrics , we think actually do maybe change the length of muscle over time .

We think that maybe the collagen and the um , the sarcomeres they're called inside a muscle that's the functional unit of a muscle by doing loaded eccentrics in a proper position we actually might make things longer over time . So for our example of a hamstring and a quad , one really good example to do for not with weight would be sliders .

So you put a slider between two spring boards or up on blocks . You square your hips , you tuck your hips under a lot , so you're not going down just by rotating your hips or arching your back , you're keeping your hips tucked under . If you don't go as low , that's okay , but you slowly lower all the way down for five seconds .

You hold the bottom of your split for five seconds and you come all the way back up by using your hands . You do five repetitions , okay . So five repetitions of a five second lower and a five second bottom hold . That will help you get the front legs hamstring .

And if you want to get more for the quad , you could bend that back leg up similar to how you do on a wall and get the quad to stretch to as well . So those are loaded , eccentric , specific to a split .

If you wanted to do it more with external load , like a dumbbell , for example , for the back legs quad , you could do a rear foot elevated split squat . Okay so you'd put your back foot up on a block or a riser , tuck the hips under in a posterior tilt , squeeze the glute .

You would have weights in your hands , maybe 15 pounds , and you would slowly do a five second lower all the way down until your knee gets close to the ground . Hold that when you feel a really big quad stretch , hold for five seconds , take your foot off the riser , stand back up with two legs , okay so one on the way down for the eccentric .

Step off , stand up and you would do five repetitions . So five second lower , five second bottom . Hold for five repetitions . That would help the back legs quad eccentric overload and you can do both legs there . For the hamstring , you could do a stiff leg at RDL . Okay so you put a one foot down on the ground . You have it .

You're standing up , you have a kickstand , maybe the other legs there for balance , but you keep your knee relatively straight and you do same dumbbells . You do a stiff leg at RDL with a neutral core , five second lower , all the way down your shin . Feel the hamstring stretching quite a bit . Hold that for five seconds .

Put the other foot down , stand up on two legs Okay , so those would be loaded eccentrics for the hamstring and for the quad . So now what you have is you have your screen is done . That is proven that you have a hamstring and a hip flexor issue . That's why your split can't go down . You don't have any bony changes that can't be fixed . Right .

You're going to do foam rolling or stick massage to each thing the quad and the hamstring on both sides for 30 to 60 seconds . Then you're going to go do a leg lower stretch and a quad stretch for 30 to 60 seconds on each side twice . Then you go over and do a set of rear foot elevated split squats with that tempo five second lower , five second hold .

Partner that with an eccentric RDL five second lower , five second hold . We do two rounds of that and then the next thing we're going to do is we're going to build that into some sort of active flexibility to make it show up in the thing that you want to .

Okay , so for most gymnasts they want it to show up in jumps or leaps or like pommel horse swings for guys , right , so you're going to go then do some sort of active flexibility drill that will transfer over the immediate changes that we're seeing into something relevant , okay , so now , for example , maybe we put a fair band around our ankles , we lie on our

back , put our elbows up behind us and we do 10 active kicks to the front and to the back on each side , right .

Or maybe we go into a trampoline or a springboard or a floor and we jump into a split and jump into an active flex with those bands on and try to get really high , really high , because now we're trying to actively use muscles to pull us into a new range of motion or the similar range of motion to hopefully help that stick right .

So , reinforcing the new motion , but then also trying to make sure we're teaching our brain how to use those muscles properly . Okay , so now we have 10 of an active flex drill there's many other drills that you could do on top of that right to reinforce that split . Okay .

And then , finally , during the entire workout or whenever you're training , you have to have really good technique and really good basics , right , so you have to be using your active flexibility with your kicks or your jumps or your leaps or your choreography or your pommel horse swings , right , you can't be lazy and just go through the motions a little bit .

So that is the entire system of what I have found most helpful . Okay , just to kind of summarize this for people get a screen and then do some sort of soft tissue work and stretching , followed up with loaded eccentrics , right and active flexibility every single day , five to six days per week for four to six weeks . That is how you see change .

Okay , so do that for four to six weeks , retest your splits at the end and see if that gets better .

But for our example of doing a split , it was screening out and seeing that maybe it's the hamstring on the front leg and the quad stiffness on the back leg , doing foam rolling of the quad and the hamstring for 30 to 60 seconds each side , doing a loaded eccentrics with a five second lower and a five second bottom , hold for five repetitions .

So our rear foot elevated split , squat on one partner , that with a single leg , stiff legged RDL , and then go do some active flexibility of jumps or leaps or technique or something like that . Then try to reinforce that with really good basics .

Okay , so is if you came to me in the clinic and said I want to get better splits , I would give you that right . I'll give you that exact thing to do for a month and then recheck it and see what's going on , and so that is the system that I think blends a lot of the kind of traditional old school type stuff with the new school type stuff .

So you want to make sure that you have a little bit of both and that technique and basics are reinforcing . That people always ask you know , what should I do if it just doesn't work ? You know what if I try for four weeks and it just doesn't work right ? Well , number one is audit to see are you going through rapid growth ?

If you're a young athlete age 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , you're probably growing quite a bit . The bones grow faster than the muscles and they can't keep up . So there is a bit of a patience there . You have to just be diligent , continue to work and maybe modify some of your skills in the short term to make sure you get through .

Okay , If you're older , check to make sure that you don't have a bony limitation right , like in your hips . Do you have hip anteversion or retroversion which you can test out with a Craig's test or with other things ? On the medical side ? You can test those out .

Make sure you don't have bony limitations in the joints right For the ankle joint , for example , some people have a very stiff ankle joint with bone overgrowth from years of ankle sprains or problems in their ankles right . So you have to make sure you don't have those things .

If you are , unfortunately , someone who just picked the wrong parents and you're not the most hypermobile , you're not the most lax , you don't have great gains with flexibility . That probably means you're stronger and more powerful , which is fine . But then you have to start looking at is there a way to modify my skills ? Right ?

Maybe I'm not going to do uh , I'm not going to work a switch ring with this athlete because they're super stiff , right ? Maybe I'm not going to do a layout step out with this athlete because they're stiff . Maybe we're going to work on back tucks . Maybe we're going to work on front tucks .

Maybe we're going to work on some other version of the code that we can do If they're probably growing and they're probably also stiff . So those athletes really struggle quite a bit , but you just need to be patient and keep working and keep working .

If they don't do certain levels in certain years because they're going to get risk getting hurt with their splits , it's okay , just wait . They're probably 10 . It's totally fine just to wait and slow down till they grow a bit more . If someone's older and they're stiff , chances are they're not doing enough .

I have very few times in my life when I've and is doing every single thing I just mentioned , six days a week for an entire month , before they ask for help , right ? So I always ask them , right , like it's not getting better . Why have we done a proper screen ? Do we know what's going on , yes or no ?

Yes , okay , now have you done soft tissue work , stretching eccentrics , active flexibility every single day , five to six days per week for four to six weeks minimum , before we even see if there's changes and that's what the research suggests you need changes on .

Very few people are in that category of they're not seeing progress and they're doing every single thing every single day , right , if not a little bit more , and then reinforcing that with good basics , and so that is what I hear . Often , people kind of come to me with problems , for is that kind of stuff .

So every possible scenario you could think of has a systematic approach for flexibility like that . So , whether it's splits front or side , if it's shoulder flexibility , that entire circuit would look like screen to make sure that we know is it your thoracic spine , is it your lats ? Is it your Terry's major ? Is it your pec right ?

So say it's someone who has very stiff lats because they've just been training a lot . Okay , we're going to foam roll the underarm area for 30 to 60 seconds . We're going to do some very specific PVC stick stretches where we put our elbows close , our hands wide around our upper back to make sure the lats are getting stretched , not pinching our shoulder .

We're gonna do that for 30 to 60 seconds . Then we're gonna do negative chin up , lowers . You jump to a low bar with a weight in our ankles and we slowly lower down five second , lower , five second hold .

Then we're going to go do some wall angels or some stomach shoulder circles for active flexibility and then hold a tucked handstand against the wall and then go do some basics and some kipkass handstands or some handstand holds .

Okay , again , 30 to 60 seconds of foam rolling , 30 to 60 seconds of stretching , 30 to 60 seconds of chin up , negative eccentric lowers , active flexibility with wall angels , technique and basics every single day , five to six days per week , four to six weeks . That's how you help someone's shoulder flexibility get better .

Maybe adding in a little bit of upper back flexibility over a foam roller or doing some active T-spine rotations that is like the equation right . So splits , shoulders , wrist flexibility , ankle flexibility we have all these circuits online and shifts YouTube .

But that is what summarizes all of the research that I've seen in the last 10 years and also meets it practically with 15 minutes in the gym . That can be done 15 minutes in the gym every single day or at home easily .

You don't need a lot of equipment , you don't need space , you don't need time , you just need the right exercises and the discipline and the consistency

to do it . So I wanted to make this one intentionally short because I wanted to not belabor the point . There's a huge rabbit hole we could go down to . There's long blogs , long articles on shift If you want more YouTube videos , podcasts , stuff like that . But that is everybody who asked me how do I get more flexible ?

I'm going to point them to this episode and say do this first and then from there we can be more nuanced about what kind of thing . So I want to make it short under 25 minutes Did a good job . This is only 20 . If you guys enjoyed this content , I'm trying to go even more summary based for people , in shorter little snippets .

Hit me up on Instagram , extra Twitter , facebook , whatever . Let me know if you like it . Love if you screenshot this episode , toss it up , tag us . So this is a really great episode . I love more on this topic , or this topic or this topic and tag shifts account .

That's how I know that these things are what people want , because all of these episodes we're filming are based off of other people's input . So hope that was super helpful and I'll see you guys on the next one where we talk about . We're going to talk about injuries , next prehab injuries . You know all that kind of stuff , so hope this was helpful .