Improving Flexibility: Exact Step By Step Scientific Methods

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We break down a clear, research-backed path to better flexibility using simple daily stretching, short soft tissue work, heavy eccentrics, and active drills that help the nervous system keep new range. We finish with a practical circuit, progress timeline, and a resource for coaches who want more depth.

• Static stretching dosage that drives change 
• Warm-up sequencing that protects power 
• Short, moderate soft tissue work to prime tissues 
• Eccentric exercises for lasting adaptation 
• Active flexibility drills to own end range 
• Technique and programming that make gains stick 
• A simple circuit and four to five week timeline

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Transcript

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Why Flexibility Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Every day you essentially pay your dues by doing the harder thing when it's the right thing to do. What's up everybody? I am here to share with you a very popularly requested uh topic about how do you actually improve flexibility? What is the best ways to improve flexibility and range of motion, right? What does the science say? What do we really know is the most effective based on where we are now? And we wanted to put out a great video that summarizes a lot of the things that we have found really helpful in the last 10 years when working with hundreds and hundreds of athletes. And so I want to share some of those here with you so you can kind of learn from it, but also I want to kind of share maybe the background of why that is and some of the studies you can check out to see what's going on here. So let's dive right into it, right? What is kind of the most important or most effective things to do if you're really trying to think about improving flexibility? Say it's you want to get your splits better, your jumps better, your overhead shoulder flexibility better, your pancake, your pike, right? There's so many things out there you can do. What do we kind of know from the research that are really, really effective

What The Research Actually Says

SPEAKER_00 0:57

ways to do this? Okay, number one, which is kind of the most obvious for most people, is just stretching, right? So a lot of people understand that stretching is important, but I think there's a lot of mystery out there about what types of stretching, how long, how often to do that. And there's some actually really good studies that have come out, one of which is going to be from Thomas in 2018, which is a really nice systematic review and his large review of the different types of stretching you can do and what's most effective to improve range of motion. So if you look at their research that looked at tons of studies, we have things like static stretching, PNF or active stretching, um, passive stretching, ballistic stretching. What these studies showed is that actually static stretching is really effective to improve range of motion, right? So doing static stretching, uh, two sets of 30 seconds to try to get about five to six days per week, right? So doing two sets of 30 seconds per muscle group was really, really effective to try to get that dosage. Those studies are interesting because if you look at people who stretched about 60 seconds or people stretched about 60 to 120, so one to two minutes, and then those who went above two minutes and really, really long holds, they actually were really, really similar in their effectiveness, right? So it's interesting to see that because some people are doing two, three, four minute holds and some really aggressive methods. I think what this research shows us is that consistency is more important than intensity. So we prescribe a lot of static stretching. Again, five to six days per week, two sets of 30 seconds per muscle group. If you look at that study, static stretching is a little bit more effective, right? Versus something like ballistic stretching is a little bit less effective. But also, you know, some active stretching, some passive stretching, some more P and F stretching, they all kind of work to improve range of motion. So I think it's really about what you find on a screen to say, like, okay, I need to work my hamstrings, I need to work on my lats, I need to work on my shoulders, whatever else it is. And doing those things consistently every single day is really, really important.

Static Stretching Dosage That Works

SPEAKER_00 2:40

Okay. And I know some people are worried about stretching with, well, I heard about static stretching and reducing power performance, all that kind of stuff. There were some studies that came out in like 2010 to 2015 that were kind of concerned for if we static stretch and then go do power work, that it's going to reduce the effectiveness of our workout, right? So I think you have to look a little bit more deeper into the methods of those studies. I think a lot of those studies, what they did is they static stretch someone for like two to five minutes, and they're like, okay, go sprint as fast as you can, right? Or go max back squat or try to do really, really heavy lifting. I think intuitively, most people with common sense would understand that's not the way to program a warmup. So there's new research that's come out, uh, Shabin in 2019 had a really good paper that was just talking about kind of clarifying what he called the caveats, right? The caveats of how to go about static stretching. And what those have kind of showed is that if we sequence static stretching in the warm-up in a small amount with proper dynamic warm-up and activation and power drills, those drops in power are really trivial, right? So it's a good thing for us to understand because we can get some static stretching in to improve passive range of motion and crew flexibility if we're doing it in the right sequencing and in the right order. So stretching is really, really something we want to do. And again, just to kind of really wrap it up here, we're trying to say five to six days per week seems to be the most effective. Right? We're thinking about two sets of 30 seconds per muscle group. And we're trying to think around, right, about a 60-second hold or so. So two sets of 30 seconds will give you that. Right? That's kind of what we're looking for every single day to kind of work on if you want to improve range of motion. Okay, so that's kind of the first staple to really work on. Okay, the second thing that's really effective is gonna be some sort of soft tissue work, okay? And I know again, this is another thing in the literature where people are kind of freaking out about like, you know, you're wasting all your time doing static or stretching, you're wasting all your time doing foam rolling, stuff like that. If you look at the literature, right, Chris Beersley's review in 2015 and a more recent review by Skinner in 2020, we do see that soft tissue work does help to improve range of motion in certain circumstances. And the way we think that's happening is really through blood flow. We think that's happening through maybe some some perceived soreness being reduced. But really interestingly, if you look at some of the vibration-assisted research, right? Vibration-assisted research really does support that. It can help relax the muscle temporarily, right? So I don't think we want to go from doing like, you know, soft tissue work and immediately saying, like, okay, I'm permanently more flexible. Let's go do everything we're gonna do. That's not what we're saying. Well, we can use soft tissue work and vibration-assisted soft tissue work to kind of help uh augment some of the stretching or augment some of our dynamic warm-up. That's really what we're looking for, right? There's some super interesting research from uh particularly in gymnastics where vibration-assisted uh split holds or static stretching holds showed monstrous gains in flexibility. They were transient. They lasted about 15 or 20 minutes after a sense. But I think what we're thinking about is using soft tissue work or using some uh self-assisted soft tissue work to then go on and do more active flexibility work or do more stretching work or do a dynamic warm-up, right? It's a means to an end to help prepare the body, right? And so when we're warming up in particular, it's really good for us to use some of this because it does increase some blood flow. It may help with perceived soreness. That's been shown in some other reviews as well. So we want to use these as tools, maybe in a warm-up. It might not be our main method to improve range of motion, say static stretching or eccentrics, like we'll talk about, are probably more effective if you're really hammering trying to improve one range of motion or particularly like a split or overhead shoulder flexibility. But in the context of a warm-up, it's something that is really, really helpful along with a dynamic warm-up together to help the body get going. So I think we see some good research that dynamic stretching and dynamic warm-ups with power and plyos and skipping and that kind of stuff is probably more effective during the warm-up section and the kind of getting the body ready to go. But if we're looking at improving range of motion, we do have some support that stretching, soft tissue, and vibration assisted, along with maybe some eccentrics, like we'll talk about next, are probably really effective. So we'll talk about it at the end, but I'm probably gonna go ahead and give someone a circuit of a bunch of things that are supported in the literature to try to do that. And when I talk about soft tissue work, I'm not talking about five, 10, 15 minutes, right? I'm talking about very easy, very quick doses, even with the people that I coach or people I work with. We might just do 30 to 60 seconds, right, of a certain area with about a four out of a 10 intensity, right? We look at some other literature that you don't have to really crush yourself on a foam roller for it to work. We don't think we're deforming

Power Loss Myths And Warm-Up Sequencing

SPEAKER_00 6:40

fascia, we don't think we're breaking up scar tissue, right? If you look at Chandra's review in 2006 and some other really great studies that have come out, we don't think that we're really, you know, breaking up scar tissue, so to speak. So a couple minutes of soft tissue foam rolling to certain areas you're gonna work on, keeping the intensity moderate consistently every single day with stretching is probably a really effective way to get about some of our flexibility gains. Okay. So third, moving on here, something that I think is still really not talked about a ton and it's really not used a ton, unfortunately, is gonna be eccentric strength training. Okay, eccentric strength training is something that's really, really interesting. If you look at the literature on soft tissue work, stretching, that kind of stuff, particularly Conrad in 2014, uh, Wepler in 2010, and a recent review by Longo in 2020, they all kind of show us that regular stretching work does improve range of motion, but probably not because we're changing the length of muscles, right? We're probably not changing the actual length of the tissue over time with stretching. What we're probably doing is we're desensitizing the nerves that are associated with those muscles that kind of detect discomfort or pain, right? They're called nosaceptors. So what we think is happening mainly is that when we stretch, when we do soft tissue work, when we regularly do flexibility work, we're desensitizing the nerves around that area and we're helping improve the tolerance to stretch. Like that's the main thought right now about why stretching works or why soft tissue work kind of works, it reduces perceived soreness or perceived discomfort. So, with that in mind, if we're doing really more uh you know neurological changes here, eccentric training, though, if you look at a review right by Pinchera that just came out in 2021, they were doing three weeks of uh heavy eccentric Nordic hamstring lowers. It did change fascicle length over time, right? I used to think it was much more about sarcomeres in length, the functional units of muscles getting longer. But I think maybe we're not seeing that as much. And there are some studies that show no change if we don't do enough weight or enough uh resistance on top of it. But the the review by O'Sullivan in 2014 showed some really good uh examples of like five seconds of a five, or sorry, five repetitions of a five-second lower with a five-second hold were pretty effective to help increase some of the fascicle length and soft tissue work. But I think this is a really good option for us to use is applying the research around some different areas and using eccentrics to help improve range of motion. So I'm oftentimes prescribing two to three sets of five reps of a five-second lower and a five-second hold at the bottom during someone's warm-up, right? The facility that I work at, championing physical therapy and performance. We do a lot of this in the strength and conditioning part of it. With the strength coaches, I do a lot of it in the rehab side, and I use this quite a bit at the middle to end stages of rehab for someone getting back to a really aggressive sport that demands range of motion. So for the lats, for example, for the Terry's major, if we want better overhead shoulder flexibility, we could do a chin-up negative for five second lower with a five-second hold with maybe a weight vest on or a dumbbell between our feet and a reverse grip to stretch the lats out. For the uh quads and the hip flexors, we could do an eccentric rear foot elevated split squat, is a really, really effective way to do that as well with dumbbells in our hands. For someone trying to get more of their hamstring length, we could do an eccentric single leg kickstand RDL with a five-second lower and a five-second hold with a nice stiff leg, right? Those are all really great options to do, and I think it's super effective for people who are trying to improve range of motion. Okay. Down here, uh, number four here, I think oftentimes kind of paired with the eccentrics, is what we call in the kind of gymnastics community of more active flexibility. There's a lot of names for this, right? Some people call it PS, some people call it active flexibility, some people just call it range of motion training. There's tons of stuff we can do, but essentially what we're trying to do is use the musculature we have to work through a range of motion, right? So I think oftentimes it's important to realize these things can help to improve range of motion, but we need to use the range of motion. We need to actively be using some of the things that we're gaining as we work on it to hopefully help our nervous system hang on to that and make that stick, right? So different uh, you know, options here, I think in the gymnastics community, the most popular

Soft Tissue And Vibration Tools

SPEAKER_00 10:20

one we talk about is like band-assisted kicks or some sort of jumps and leaps. There's a super interesting um chip book chapter by Dr. William Sands and Cardinale's book, Strength and Conditioning, that they talk about a study where they did with national team-level gymnasts where half the uh athletes got band-assisted kicks and half the group did not. And they were testing to see does the band-assisted kicks improve range of motion over time. They had to stop the study early because the results were so dramatic for the group with the Theraband assisted active flexibility kicks that the other half of the arm of the study was jealous that they weren't getting enough attention or getting their improvements to be made. So they stopped the study early and they started doing it. But there is really, really good support behind this kind of concept of active flexibility. So there's many different ways you can do this, right? And this might be holding a deep squat hold and a goblet squat, right? Doing five sets of a nice little warm-up, and two maybe or those five are going to do a nice deep squat with a bottom position hold where the weight is not super high and you're not gonna hurt something, but you're really working on sinking down to that deep range of motion, right? Or doing some really good long hang positions, right? When you're working on chin-ups or pull-ups and you want over flexibility, doing all these things before, and then maybe doing a nice 30-second uh deep long hang, trying to really extend through your upper back and your T-spine. So some sort of active flexibility drill is great. There's a lot of things called wall angels or uh stomach circles that are awesome as well. PVC prone liftoffs. We can do all sorts of different things we're trying to work on. Uh, single-leg weighted hip lifts are an awesome anterior kind of hip flexor mobilization to get on strength of the back, work on the front. A lot of great options here. But something kind of I'd like to work in here is maybe just a couple drills that I really like. Or a few sets of ten during some of the extra like kind of accessory work. So that's kind of a super important one to jump on to as well. And very closely related to that is gonna be what I feel is one of the most important things. It's gonna just be technique, right? Basic technique, right? Basics, drills, right? These things are absolutely foundational to making sure that you're getting proper technique that supports the range of motion you're using. If you're doing the best stretching program, the best soft tissue work, the best eccentrics and active flexibility, but then you go over and you do overhead presses and you don't have a good core position, you just let your back arch and you're pressing the weight in front of you, and you're really not thinking about technique, or that the weight's just too heavy for you, or your programming is really not great, it's not gonna be great, right? It's gonna make those changes not really show up and stick long term for some of their other things. So we have to have just a basic discipline and a basic respect to not put as much weight in the bar if our form starts to fall apart, or if we're trying to do squatting or deadlifting, we start to see some really funky mechanics with our knees, or we don't really sink into a full squat, or like we're not really getting a good position we need. Well, that's gonna be problematic. So anything you possibly do above the road, it won't show up if you don't actually have proper programming, proper technique, and proper basics and drills that you're gonna just support those things every single day. So I would try to do every single day some sort of basics or drills or basic foundational technique work, minimum of 10 minutes in your warm-up. Before you start loading weight in the bar, before you start having somebody run and sprint and work on the fun stuff, you have to do some sort of basic work, high knees, butt kickers, high shins, A skips, B skips, right? Barbell work that's just empty, gymnastics works, that's just basic lines, all that kind of stuff. So that will solidify a lot of the progress you make up here, right? So, in review, what would I do if I was giving someone a nice flexibility program, right? I would screen them, I would figure out what's going on, why they can't get into the positions they want to get to, and what are their goals. Based on that, I would give them some specific stretching work, five to six days per week, two sets of 30 seconds of a muscle group. Static seems to be pretty good, but also you could do some active or PNF type stuff. Okay, we'd also want to give them some sort of soft tissue or vibration assisted work if we can. We'd give them some eccentrics in their warm-up, maybe two to three sets of five reps with a five second lower and a five-second hold, some active flexibility work, two sets of ten, and then the programming, making sure that's working really, really well. Okay, the order I'd probably go in since a flow would probably be the soft tissue work, then the stretching, then the eccentrics, then the active flexibility. I'd probably do that a couple rounds in a row. So pick one or two drills for each of these, make a nice little circuit out of it, and then kind of see if that helps over time, measuring against that screen to make sure they're making progress. So hopefully that's a really helpful kind of review of the literature of what I've read and what I've found really, really effective. A lot of that stuff is not only things that look good on paper, but they actually work. Like I've actually seen these things work with a lot of people objectively

Eccentric Strength For Lasting Gains

SPEAKER_00 14:20

when you look at their motion before and after, or like maybe four to five weeks worth of training, right? I would generally uh try to do this for three to four weeks before I really saw any like huge changes. It's not going to change overnight, right? So you need someone again five to six days per week, consistently, maybe four to five weeks. There's good literature that that does support range of motion changes. You just got to really be consistent and hammer away on those things. So hopefully that's really helpful. Again, if you like this stuff and this is really interesting for you, definitely check out the gymnastics flexibility brewprint. It's something we've been working on super hard, and we have some really, really good feedback so far in our community about people who have gotten early access to it. So if you're working in gymnastics or dance or cheerleading or ballet, that course is going to be a dream come true. It's got everything you possibly need for the science of stretching, what stretches for pikes and straddles and pancakes and shoulder, how to make a warm up, how to actually implement side stations, how to actually put a whole home program all together. All that stuff is in there, and we have a great community of discussion, people who are really helping out with some awesome questions. So hope that this was helpful, and I hope to see you guys inside the course.