Are you flexible enough?

I’ve just got long arms actually ;)

“I’m just not flexible enough!!”

I hear this quite a lot from people who don’t want to do yoga…it’s always puzzled me a bit because it seems that if you’re not flexible then doing some yoga might help with that. I mean, flexibility isn’t a pre-requisite for getting into a yoga class!

But I realised that it’s true – people who go to yoga are usually the bendy types so it appears that yoga ‘is for bendy people’. Not everybody of course but understandably, someone who is very inflexible or stiff might indeed feel out of place amongst the extreme bendiness of the regular yogis. So, eventually the stiff people might go a beginners class hoping that there will be other inflexibles there too, and they’ll suffer through the more intense stretching and probably loosen up and become more flexible if they stick with it for a while.

I’d like to de-bunk this myth that yoga is essentially made for bendy people. There is, however an element of truth in it  - it originated in India where it’s hot most places so that would help and also there’s scientific evidence that Asians are generally more flexible than other ethnicities. So, for anyone wanting an excuse to avoid yoga there it is – it was invented by bendy people in hot places.

However, let’s get down to the muscle and bone of the issue! Yoga is so successful as a physical conditioning for the body (and mind but that’s another topic) partly because it treads the balance between strength and stretch. Each pose is designed to strengthen something and stretch something. For example – downward facing dog stretches out the hamstrings, the arm muscles and spine but also strengthens the quads, abdominals, shoulders, hands and wrists simultaneously. Triangle Pose is both a stretch and a strength building exercise for the legs and hips. I venture to say that it’s likely that this isn’t being taught explicitly enough in many yoga classes and so students are focusing only on pulling themselves into what they see as a shape which stretches muscles.

Yoga isn’t stretching. They are not the same thing. Stretching is indeed a part of the actions performed in a yoga practice. It was a breakthrough point for me when I realised that I needed to engage one set of muscles properly in order to stretch out the other (quads and hamstrings in that moment!) successfully. I was pulling on my muscles but not using them; I wasn’t really aware of what I was doing.

If we stretch without engaging muscles we might overstretch and damage the tissues or we might just be using our range of motion – how far we can naturally go with our joints and muscles- which isn’t necessarily bad but probably isn’t developing anything much. Like in a gentle warm up moving the muscles and mobilising the joints but not challenging anything. A super bendy person can easily do a yoga pose because of their long muscles or loose ligaments but may well not be gaining anything (except the happy feeling of being good at it!) because little or no work is required for them to just make the shape.

To come full circle to the inflexibles - why do you want to be flexible? Dancers and gymnasts need to be uber bendy, runners, hikers and cyclists don’t generally.  If you have a lot of strength then likely you’ll need to work to maintain or develop flexibility for suppleness to support your ability to move fluidly. You’ll also probably need to release tension from the muscles which have worked hard. If you’re not particularly strong then cultivating strength is key for you. But isn’t it good to be flexible? Again, it depends on what you are doing and need to do with your body. 

We also tend to confuse stretching with tension release – again, not quite the same thing although the former may be contained in the latter. What a lot of us very active people need ( I really do speak from experience!) is to get rid of excess tension rather than become more flexi. If we hike, bike or run a lot then certain muscles get very strong, others may be weak and we can develop chronic ‘tightness’ in either of those groups. So, inflexible people – you may be perfectly flexible enough for your needs but be holding a lot of tension in certain areas. Or, yes you may want to ‘lengthen’ some muscles a bit and become ‘more flexible’ by increasing joint mobility. In which case, yoga is definitely for you!!! But find a class where the instruction around engaging muscles, different types of stretching (addressed in another blog post) and tension release is understood. Not all yoga classes have the same goal – I don’t mean it’s a bad class if the teacher isn’t explicit about this, the focus may be elsewhere in that particular style or class.

Much more about stretching in another blog post coming soon…what goes on physiologically? do we actually need to do it? what about my friend who never stretches ever and is perfectly fine? should I be doing PNF?

coming soon ;)