Beaufort Personal Trainer Flexibility Training

“Hey! What’s going on? It’s Ian Hart here the EarthFIT blog and I am going to go over today Improving Flexibility. A lot of times people are tight and they ask “what can I do to get more flexible, how come I am not getting more flexible?” Well, we have flexibility in our training but that is not our main focus. Our main focus are burning fat and getting people results. So, what I am going to do though is explain to you how you can continue to improve your flexibility on your own.
First off, if you train here you already know that you gotta to warm up. Before working out you gotta warm up, but that’s the same for stretching. You can’t stretch on cold body, it’s actually not beneficial for you and you won’t get results. For stretching, you gotta have enough blood flow and oxygen to the body where your muscles are heated up, your joints are heated up and they’re supple, and you have ability to stretch them.

So again warm up: a warm up should be a minimum of 5 minutes where you are sweating, breathing hard and you are loosened up. Then, just like training, you want to do repetitions. So I am going to go just out there and say OK: 3 set of 20-30 second holds to see results – to see progressive results, if you only hold it for 10 seconds, you’re not going to see that stretch elasticity happen in your muscles. It’s actually gotta to hold it past that and that’s where you see the release in the muscles so you are increasing your flexibility. So above 12 seconds minimum to see results research has shown. But, 20-30 seconds is probably going to be the best, and above 30 seconds is not really going to give much results.

Then it’s gotta be 3 times a week or more. Two times a week you will probably see a little bit of results but 3 times a week you’re going to see that more often. It’s gotta be progressive. Just like everything else, you got to add a little bit more stress to it. So when you do a Sit and Reach (when you’re reaching for your toes), you got to push yourself a little bit more, you got to reach even further and got to force yourself to stretch. So you actually feel a little bit more in your legs, a little bit more on your hamstrings than you did last time. And that’s how you’re going to stretch your muscles and move further and increase your flexibility. You have to do the same stretches over too, so your body adapts to whatever you are doing, or gets better to whatever you are doing. You have to do the same stretches and attack the same muscles to see improvement in them.

And then target the tighter muscles too. So if you have tight muscles you want to target those muscles because you’re probably going to get most benefit out of targeting those tight muscles where you know you’re inflexible. And this is common for most people that are tighter in their pecs – doing arm stretches: arms back, hands back and pulling the elbows back. Hamstrings and calves are also tight, but it depends on the individual as well. So, this just that one aspect that you can understand when you stretch to improve your flexibility:

– Warm up
– Do 3 sets of 20-second repetitions of the same exercise
– Three (3) times a week, in a progressive manner (so you see yourself going further each time whether it feels uncomfortable or not you gotta feel discomfort to actually see results in stretching and health and fitness)
– Do the same stretches; and
– Target tight muscles.

This is Ian Hart with the EarthFIT blog, I hope this helps you progress in your stretching and your flexibility. Have a great day!”

Ian Hart is a Body-Mind Transformation expert, the creator of EarthFIT Training Systems, co-creator of BACK PAIN RELIEF4LIFE, and founder of BEAUFORTPERSONALTRAINING.COM and MYBACKPAINCOACH.COM. Ian and his team help people get into optimal shape in the safest, fastest and most effective way possible, using cutting edge science.