Kit_L

Did you practise the stretch you mention—if you did, what were your reactions in the body? Brachialis is a forearm muscle; the two muscles that make the bulk of the armpit are latissimus dorsi and pectoralis. Doing the lying relaxation practice every day will reduce overall tension in the body, over time, and all the neck exercises will help this problem potentially as well. None are as directly effective as the one I linked to to above.

If you can lie like that without your shoulders cramping up, and it's comfortable enough for you to be able to relax completely, I can't see any problem with that at all.

Look up "heart rate recovery" (HRR) protocols and see how these are used. Establish your basal pulse rate. This is always taken in the mornings while you're still in bed. Take it a few times to make sure you've actually got it accurately — everyone wants to have a lower pulse rate so just taking your own pulse can make you a bit anxious and hence give a higher number rate! Record this every day. After a month or two, you'll know what your basal pulse rate is. Then you use the heart rate recovery protocols to establish two things: how quickly you recover from strong effort, and whether this duration decreases as you're getting fitter (over time, months–years) and whether your basal pulse rate also slowly decreases getting fitter over time – we're talking a year or two here also.

Next time, take your pulse immediately after stopping and note the perceived difficulty (the number out of 10), then two, or three, minutes later. Note the differences. Have you been taking your pulse first thing in the morning, to establish your basal pulse rate? The human pulse rate varies between 60–100 bpm (on average, one SD from the mean), so unless you have a base line, the numbers are effectively meaningless because of this variation. Your base rate, and your rate of recovery are unique, unique to you. Only changes to these over time have meaning. Measure the same way; one, two, and three minute measurements are commonly done. Look up "heart rate recovery" (HRR).

How long after? And out of 10, how hard?

Depends on when that reading was taken; we can't tell from what you wrote.

You'd have to post a pic of that position; I do not know it.

Gene, I have not shot this morning routine, but do have individual videos for the relaxed lunge HF, Elephant walk, and bent-leg Cossack exercises mentioned above on our YT channel. Once you know these exercises, you will not need any video to follow. Lastly, I want to stress that these are the three exercises which my body needs – yours may need three different exercises possibly, although I think the relaxed lunge with the bent-to-straight front leg aspect will probably be in your routine—most people seem to need this one. I also squat for a few minutes every day. Right now I am stuck in a little place called Iluka, after the engine stopped running on our boat while we were offshore transiting to Brisbane. The weather is going to be awful for the next week offshore so will be putting off continuing in the journey until that clears. If you really want me to do a quick morning routine video which shows the exercises that I use, once the ground is not as wet as it is currently, I could knock that off quickly and post it.

We all are, and if you're lucky, it never stops! Working on the stretching twice a week will work in well with the relaxation, you'll find.

Definitely the best book on the subject, but if you can, try to get one of the earliest additions – he sanitised many of the scripts because the image of a burning body floating down the Ganges River was considered to confronting for most western students. For him of course, watching these Riverville would've been a daily occurrence if he was in that area. With regards to point 1 – you most definitely do not need to do a guided practice. My recommendation is to do breath counting practice instead and I think I've written about this elsewhere. If I haven't, I can give you a quick primer on it. Then, once that practice has been embodied and you can get to at least 108 breath counts without losing your concentration, then it's perfectly okay to do the practice without "doing" anything except being aware of what's happening now. The only potential downside of this is if you're not well rested the likelihood of you falling asleep is quite a bit more likely! With regard to point 2, you have to embed part of your awareness in your body so that as you feel yourself tightening up in relation to what's going on around you, you take a breath and as you breathe out, let your tummy go completely soft, and simply allow yourself to relax. No one around you will notice anything changing, but you'll feel very different though. I don't know if you are doing any particular stretching exercise practice presently, but the reason we recommend these (lying relaxation, and regular stretching) being done together is that the more accomplished you become at the stretching part, the more quickly you become aware that you're tightening up in the moment at work. Each works with the other extremely well.

Those four will keep you going for a while—in the advanced class, we did the partner hip flexor stretch every Tuesday night for a year before everyone started to get really flexible in this line. It's tremendously important and it certainly worth repeating the same exercise a couple of times each session and that'll take you 20 or 30 minutes. Usually, you will get much deeper in the second iteration.

Rather that lying face up with your straight arms by your sides (and palm up, if you can do that), try opening up your elbows to 90°, and place the palms flat on the floor. The possible problem with putting the hands on the hips is that they can go to sleep (blood flows from the fingertips to the elbow under garity's force. OTOH, if you can lie with your fingers on your size as you describe without your hand dangerous to sleep, by all means try that. The real requirement, the deep requirement, is that you can relax the body completely, so any arm position that will allow that is fine.

Embodiment in process. Thumbs up.

Isn't it. Thanks for reporting!

Not really WRT the ball of foot bounces we're talking about; I can't get into the deep physiology today, but plyometrics are more about stored tendon energy (in short fractions of time; up to a few tenths of a second) than about fast twitch fibres; and a great deal more happens too. However it works, definitely good to wake the system up and prepare it for the stresses coming.

By definition, yes. Anything with a bounce is plyometric.

It all depends... At your stage in the journey, I suggest you stretch to make the body feel comfortable, relaxed, and to help you sleep and recover. Adaptation happens after whatever the stimulus is – right? I don't know whether you're doing the lying relaxations or not, but that will also help you to be more relaxed as you're running, once that new state sets in the body. As well, you can (of course) use stretching to improve the range of motion of anything that you feel is holding you back while you run. Last for today, I recommend that you do dynamic warmups not static ones – because I don't know what your warmup consists of. So, for example, bouncing on the balls of your feet to wake up your calf muscles and then giving them a quick stretch is a good thing, and same with the standing lunge (bounce up and down, and alternate legs—say, after five reps on the one side, going a bit deeper each rep. I strongly recommend dynamic warmups, and no static stretching – and the reason is we're trying to wake up the neural system and make sure that we have enough range of movement for whatever it is that we're doing. Always keep in mind that stretching works in the opposite way – it calms the neural system down – and you don't want that before an event. Running doesn't require much range of movement. On the other hand, following any event or after any practice sessions, that's when you sit down and stretch properly to pull the kinks out. And all the mobility movements that we use can be done in this dynamic way as well as part of your warmup if you want to. You just need to make sure the body is ready to start running slowly, and then increase the speed as you warm up. Many times in the past I have found after half a mile or so, I needed to stretch something to make Body feel comfortable so I'd stop and do that, but not holding them for any length of time, and then keep going.

Begin with the Starter course. If you want to learn the system, that's the best way in. Much more sensory information is available to you – information from the body – when you are feeling stretches that you are actually loose enough to do. As well, just enough of the reasoning behind the system (the why we do what we do part) is given in this course. This info is not really available from the other courses (especially the Mastery Course). WRT strength training: some experimenting can be instructive here – for example, in my own body having done this sort of thing for a very long time now maximum intensity is what it needs to signal to let go. But in the beginning this may not be the case. You have to try a different intensities and see which one speaks to the body most clearly. In any case, always do strength training before stretching. It is the best possible warmup, for the strongest stretches in particular.

It's possible, but then again, the mancold... Seriously, though, this will pass. Re. what to do stretching-wise, you've got the Mastery course; it is more difficult to pick the useful bits from this than the Starter Course, which is whole-body and follow-along. Very likely.

Consistency, not going too hard, and doing the relaxation exercises daily as well are the keys. Welcome!

Yes, but opening up the stride pattern is not without its own potential problems (it changes foot strike, for example). But loosening the quads and hip flexors the way you suggest will definitely make the process easier. Take you time doing this!

To answer that question ("what kinds of poses would be good to record?") depends on where you feel the most restrictions. If you advise, we may be able to offer suggestions.

Try bending the straight leg a little; you'll be able to get much closer to the leg. And once in a stretching sensation position, try two dynamic moves: straight trunk to thigh, and separately used the quad on the leg you're bending over to try to straighten the leg. One of my favourites.

Very nice graphic presentation, @Jim Pickles. WRT Claudia, I see this and the first thing that pops into my mind is, 'not in this lifetime'. Excellent, too.

The recipe for happiness, right there!