Stretching

[puunui]

Static stretching is things like sitting on the floor with one leg straight, the other pulled in to your groin in a half butterfly stretch and putting your head to the front knee. Or sitting with your legs apart and slowly holding your head as near to each knee (and then the centre) as you can. Holding it for a 5-8 seconds in each position.

Instead of head to knee, I like stomach to upper thigh. I try to make my body as long as possible. Head to knee curves the spine and people end up stretching their neck to reach that knee instead of stretching their legs.

The distinction is made clear in Dr Tom Kurz's book Stretching Scientifically, where he also goes on to show (with lots of references to scientific research) that static stretching is useless unless your sport demands it (maybe gymnastics) and has a detrimental effect (as it anaesthetises your muscles causing them to not respond optimally for a period afterwards and risking damage because they are anaesthetised).

I have his book, but never put his theories to use because I could already do the splits, which I got and maintain using a combination of static and dynamic stretching.

When we're warming ourselves up, I purely do a dynamic and static active warm-up. On non-Taekwondo days I'll do isometric stretches to increase my maximum flexibility, the dynamic warm-up helps me make the most use of my maximum flexibility.

Using Tom Kurz's methods, have you been able to achieve the splits?

 

[puunui]

There is some research that static stretching pre-training/workout can destabilize the joints and lead to injury. There are a few threads about this elsewhere. As I recall, the results have suggested that some static stretches AFTER training can be beneficial.

I do a combination of static and dynamic stretching and never had destabilized joints or suffered injury to my joints as a result of stretching and neither have my students, at least when I am present at class. Joint care is one of the things that I seriously concentrate on because taking care of your joints will save you a lot of pain and suffering in your older years. And I can still do the complete front and side splits.

 

[andyjeffries]

Instead of head to knee, I like stomach to upper thigh. I try to make my body as long as possible. Head to knee curves the spine and people end up stretching their neck to reach that knee instead of stretching their legs.

I agree with this and it's how we do it, but for some reason we always describe it as this

Using Tom Kurz's methods, have you been able to achieve the splits?

In the past, yes. Only ever the front splits (I could never do the box/side splits, but I got within a couple of inches). I have a picture somewhere of me doing a suspended front split after following Dr Kurz's method. I stopped training for a few years and came back and could no longer do them. I'm now not far off, but can't do intensive isometrics without severe pain until I get my torn meniscus repaired.

When my knee is good again, going back to decent isometrics is my first priority.

 

[puunui]

I'm now not far off, but can't do intensive isometrics without severe pain until I get my torn meniscus repaired. When my knee is good again, going back to decent isometrics is my first priority.

How did you injure your knee? Because of static stretching?

 

[andyjeffries]

How did you injure your knee? Because of static stretching?

No, we were training in a conference room for a few weeks because our hall was being refurbished so instead of wood floors we were training on carpets. We were doing tornado kicks in my normal bare feet and was slipping all over the place. So I put my Taekwondo shoes on and suddenly had a lot more grip than I was used to - tornado kick, foot stayed in place and the rest of my body span round. Horrendous twist in the knee which my specialist believes is a torn cartilage. I've had an MRI and am waiting for the results.

I did this over a year ago but spent 9 months stupidly believing it would get better by itself (all the while it getting slowly worse) and then have been taking more care of it at taking Glucosamine for 3-4 months and it's LOADS better. Still hoping to get it properly fixed though with an arthroscopy though...