What do you need? What is your biggest question when it comes to sports performance, weight loss, overcoming obstacles in training, etc?

I have a lot of ideas of what to talk about, but are they what you really need?

I want to know what your biggest questions are. What do you want me to talk about?

Everyone has something different.

I like to go and visit a group of old friends from time to time, and at every visit I sit and talk with someone about there deepest questions about training for their goals.

So what are your goals and biggest set backs?

Is your goal to jump higher, run faster, lose weight, gain muscle, perform better, feel better, etc?

Is your biggest set back pain/injury, self doubt, nutrition, exercise programming, etc?

Ask your questions in the comment box below.

I may answer them right away.

I may write a blog post to answer, or I may write an article to answer it.

There are certain things out there that can be good things (when done correctly) and also can be bad things (when done poorly). 

The other day I was watching a yoga class. The instructor was having the class do the pose in the picture. Unfortunately the picture doesn’t illustrate what I saw very well.

 

Most of the class members where doing ok, the instructor was not. The instructor had her hips bent a little but a lot of range of motion in her low back.

This is a classic example of “relative flexibility”. What is relative flexibility? 

Relative flexibility comes for Shirley Sahrmann, a physical therapist, and author of “Diagnosis and Treatment of Movement Impairment Syndromes”; she uses the term to describe how the body achieves a particular movement using the relative flexibility available at a series of joints. 

She believes that in order for the body to achieve a particular range of motion, it will move through the point of least resistance, or area of greatest relative flexibility.
So what does this exactly mean? If you notice the picture of the women stretching her hip flexors, I have two arrows. The red arrow is trying to point out that her hip is not completely straight, it is still flexed. 

The white arrow is showing how she is extending her spine.

The Psoas muscle is the main muscle that she is trying to stretch. In the picture to the right you see the Psoas. You will notice that it connects to the front of the spine. So if it is pulled it will pull the spine forward, causing the spine to extend.

That is exactly what the woman in the picture is doing. She may be stretching the Psoas, but according to Sahrmann she is going to produce more range of motion in the low back before she produces more range of motion in her Psoas. 

This man is doing the hip flexor stretch correctly. His back is nice and flat and his hip is fully extended. He will get a better stretch this way and protect his low back. 

Too much range of motion in the low back will lead to low back pain. 

So the point that I want to make about stretching for flexibility is to make sure that you are stretching the intended joint and muscle. If you aren’t you might be setting yourself up for injury.