Matt Chung

> Elephant walk. My calves were tight, so I stopped and stretched them and then went back to it for a much better experience Good reminder (for myself) to step away from an exercise if its feeling unnecessarily difficult, warm up some other muscles, then return.

Day 303 of stretching and flexibility On forging my own path There's been a subtle and radical shift – not perceivable to anyone really from the outside– in how I am generally approaching life, which includes subtle changes current movement practices (dance and stretching included). I am leaning more into exploring and tinkering my own body and feed it what it wants and needs versus exclusively striving for external measures of success (e.g. increased range of motion etc). In sum, I'm learning how to forge my own path and building trust in myself and my own experiences. Of course, though nothing wrong with seeking help and guidance from others, from mentors and more seasoned movers (I would not be here with the ST program, community members, encouragement, suggestions, more), I've come to learn that I've been (a little bit unaware) trying to (overly) control the outcomes and as a result, have spend less time just experimenting, exploring, tinkering, avoidant of these out of worry that it will stunt my growth and progression. Related to the notion of forging my own path, my private dance instructor recently suggested and encouraged me to take some time to pause our intense training sessions and suggests that I devote some additional time forging my own path because she believes that I'm equipped with all the tools and techniques etc; though she (along with myself and others) observed tremendous growth in my dance, her thoughts are not that she does not want our training to develop into a handicap, where I'm unable to advance my own dance journey. Yesterday's Stretching and Strengthening Session Crawled around on all fours to just explore, with no set agenda - Something I haven't done since starting my own movement practice, getting on all fours, moving away, and just increasing awareness of stiffness in my body, increasing awareness of weaknesses in my own body. Cramped in hip flexors (rectus femoris) while trying pistol squat progression – whenever I try to straighten my leg and perform a leg lift, I immediately cramp (rectus femoris). As such, I reverted to initial progression (i.e. rolling on back and then rolling into squat position), which was a serious struggle; I had initially jumped to the third progression (in the YouTube video), over estimating my abilities. As a result of the cramping, I suspect that over time, the cramping will stop the more I practice this specific movement so I did a few sets of just straight leg lifts. Cossack Squat Exploration - feels very different when I place my intention on lengthening my spine and staying up right (less ROM) versus allowing my body to lean over. Neither is better or worst but definitely hits different muscles Attempted pancake stretch by elevating self (sitting on two plates) and trying to just lean forward - I've been avoiding even attempting / starting pancake stretch because I felt I needed to first increase ROM and strength in the underlying, individual muscles first, not wanting to take a "brute force" (i.e. less optimal) approach to stretching but I also feel that I've over-indexed on the reductionist approach (for me) and I'm reminded of a quote I had read on this forum: "The test is the exercise; the exercise is the test". I'm constantly balancing between directly practicing the X (where X can be any movement) versus all the other number things that may help perform X. Another example is, my mind sometime says, "do all these things to improve the squat" but I never end up just practicing the squat itself. Reminding myself that there's no strict dependency and that I can do BOTH, practice some move (X) directly as well as all the smaller movements that make up X.

> supervenience theory Thanks for sharing this term. With no previous encounter of the term, my curiosity let me down some light research on the concept and (at a high level) sounds like a form of dependency, but stricter.

> I am sure that you are tired of hearing me say this, but stick your butt out even more. Your lumber lordosis is flattening and then slightly flexes towards the end of the exercise position. Only go as deep as you can keep that lumber lordosis. However, truly excellent compared to your first attempt. Not at all! You're absolutely right @Kit_L. I tried a couple the other day and realized that I could actually stick my butt out further, several inches in fact. Gonna hit the gym and try the single leg dead lift plus some variations (early progressions) of the single leg squat progressions (inspired by your YouTube video) On a separate note, as of last week — after what seems like 3 months — I just realized that my plantar fasciitis has completely disappeared. I cannot explain what specific exercises — if it was the stone walking, calve raises, heel drops — contributed to the healing process (I think they all served as stimulus) but I think the most important thing for me was resting. I haven't been as active on this forum because lately been mainly limbering, not full on stretching stretching, but in a way, I think I was certainly overly pushing my nervous system despite all the flexibility gains. I'm returning back to the practice and hoping to find a new equilibrium for my body.

Day 298 of stretching and flexibility Summary Single leg Romanian dead lift - no weights still. Improved the technique (based on @Kit_L feedback above, the sticking butt out) and able to now hit 4 repetitions (per leg) before being fully gassed Slow motion butt kicks (sure there is a better/accurate name for this exercise) - in the GIF below, all I am trying to do is to slowly kick my butt to engage the hamstring and last week, I had discovered that on the first repetition, I started cramping in my hamstring. Must mean I'm working at end range of motion. Anyways, seems like my body is asking me to work this muscle at this range of motion so been doing repetitions of this every few days. Similar to above, now able to get to about 4 repetitions before cramping kicks in. Puppy pose yoga position - discovered when in this position, and I try to lift my butt in the sky, that helps bring on even a deeper stretch in only my left shoulder that is "painful" but I know will (soon enough, perhaps in weeks or months) will vanish Right head tilt - although still painful in the trap and along right side of neck, substantial increase range of motion. Still stiff but I can sense huge improvements over the last 2 weeks

Day 290 of stretching and flexibility Lying relaxation practice (LRP), single leg romanian dead lifts and active hanging Yesterday was the first time I heard "someone" snoring while I was performing the LRP and that "someone" was me. Fascinating experience. First attempts at Single Leg Romanian Dead Lift (no weights) See this thread for instruction Started trying this exercise out last week and somewhat embarrassingly I'm gassed after 2 repetitions with no weights Last week I could honestly only perform a single repetition each leg while maintaining strict form Makes me wonder how weak my glutes and hamstrings are I might try to add some weight in a few weeks but just performing right not w/ out is plenty Lately, while walking and dancing (and just moving in general) I noticed how inactive my hamstrings are and often will need to mentally bring my awareness to those muscles to engage them Been thinking about this quote often "A muscle can be as strong as possible, but if it doesn’t fire at the right time, it’s useless" (see this thread) Clip below is sped up (original repetition took about 40 seconds cause I'm struggling to stay balanced) Active hanging Testing this exercise out to complement my puppy pose stretch that very effectively targets pain in my left shoulder Although I didn't post all (4) repetitions, I noticed that after each active stretch (when I'm in the position where my elbows are about to bend), I can sink further and further into the "passive" hang Cannot hit the 15 repetition set right now so will split up repetitions into multiple sets Will be interesting to see how this impact shoulders although the puppy pose stretch tends to be the only one right now that fires up problematic area in my shoulder

Day 286 of stretching and flexibility Have been a bit absent from the ST forum over the last couple weeks and miss it a bit. Summary Though I am still slowly and now non obsessively (more on this below) increasing overall body range of motion, my attention over the past 3 weeks has been on addressing the areas that are painful: right ankle, left shoulder, right neck / trap. Though the focus is on rehabbing these areas (daily limbering and every couple days of C-R) I still am once a week dedicating sessions to doing an "intense" stretch session for my hip flexors, hamstrings, piriformis, quads (see video recap below). Reflecting over the last few months, after taking my foot off the pedal a bit with stretching, I feel that I was a bit obsessed with stretching. Not necessarily a bad thing. I am continually calibrating to increase the odds that stretching continues to be part of my life in the long run; I’m aware of my “all or nothing” tendencies. Continuing to trust the process and journey ... Right ankle / Right Foot Right ankle instability and weakness and sharp (excruciating) pain when driving heel into the ground, sharp pain in achilles heel The above may have some other knock on effects like right knee pain, right foot plantar fasciitis Over past 2 weeks, but applying strong pressure (i.e. driving heel into the ground), incrementally increasing intensity "conscious suffering" Left Shoulder Continuing to do extended puppy Bring on the "pain cave" (i.e. conscious suffering) by using my pull bar (still interested in having @Kit_L elaborate on what he called "active hanging") Right Trap / Neck Discomfort that impacts my dancing, when I tilt my head to the right This discomfort has existed for some time now but I've been neglecting it until now Motivation is now because head tilts is a particular movement I've been doing more and more often in my dance and this pain restricts my movement

> May I add, one thing that is common in our culture is called "anterior dominance" - that is, too much activation of the muscles on the front of the body (tightness, etc, due to overuse, emotional tension and poor posture) and not enough activation of the muscles on the back of the body. The correction is to rebalance it - increase the exercises that use the muscles on the back of the body (glutes, hamstrings, back muscles - including the small stabiliser muscles of the spine, etc). I hope you agree Kit. Please let me know if you dont. Hey @Jim Pickles would you be able to share some of those exercises? In particular, the back muscles / small stabiliser muscles of the spine? I'm curious what you are referring to and I may or may not already be incorporating them into my exercises and if not, would want to consider it. On the comment of "anterior dominance" ... last year in London, I took a handful of in person Yamana body rolling glasses and the instructor (lovely by the way, very knowledgeable and kind) more or less echoed the same sentiment, that we tend to over utilize the anterior chain and under utilize the poster chain. One of the exercises (extremely uncomfortable at first) was aimed to loosen up my abs and at the end of the exercise, she stated she had observably noticed that I was holding less tension in my anterior chain, that I was standing more upright. Reflecting on my stretching and flexibility journey this last year, one thing I realize is that often do not engage glutes, hamstrings unless I'm intentional. And the more aware I become of their lack of use, the more I am able to use them.

Day 271 of stretching and flexibility Summary: It's been WEEKS since I've done a serious hamstring, quad, hip flexor, pirriformis and calves routine that includes C-R Observations During hamstring stretch, placed less emphasis on pushing front leg out and more focus on driving hips back (that seemed to bring on a very strong sensation in the hamstring) Discovered I can really feel the calve stretch by increasing the height of the block (in this case, my foam roller) to rest my toe on. I noticed that after this type of calf stretch, I feel a little bit more relief in my plantar fasciitis (we're still at about 90% recovery but not fully there yet) Can notice much more difficulty getting into right pirriformis stretch when compared to left side Felt EXHAUSTED (in a good way) not only that night, but the following day; properly sore in hamstrings and hip flexors so I definitely pushed pretty close to my limit Also, every day at the London underground station I take, there lives a whiteboard that contains a "thought of the day" and today's seem relevant not only to life, but especially to those who are on this stretching and flexibility journey

Hey @Kit_L not hanging on it every day however I recently started using it (about twice a week) to rehab my left shoulder. Although I have some intuition about what you mean by active hanging — perhaps using legs mounted on the ground so that I can fully relax my shoulders — I'm hoping you could describe it and/or point me to an existing video if you already have one! Thank you

Day 271 of stretching and flexibility Yesterday, focused on repairing different parts of both shoulders Extended Puppy targets my left shoulder pain Strap targets my right shoulder pain With stretching (and other parts of life) I'm constantly learning and relearning the same lesson, repeatedly. There's this delicate balance between focusing on healing a particular muscles with targeted exercises that induce the pain/sensation to an uncomfortable yet tolerable level. At the same time, I recognize that healing takes place during periods of rest. So often, I get laser focused on "solving the problem" — obsession if you will — and recognize that — like other parts healed with my body over the last year — there will be a day when I get myself into a position for the nth time, only to experience less or no pain. So this is more or less a reminder for self: just keep going and trust the process. I'm gaining more and more confidence in my ability to repair my body.

Was watching comedy show "The Office" and thought this clip was both hilarious and reminded me of ST forum given how much emphasis there is on flexing the glutes, especially after reading Jim Pickle's comment: "...I strongly suggest that you clench up the glutes as much as possible (feel with your fingers, to check that all the muscles around the back of the buttock - inner as well as outer sides - are clenched as tightly as possible). This will help relax and open up the front of the hip"

Day 268 of stretching and flexibility Summary: Experimenting with foam rolling hamstrings (Gracilis, Semitendinosous) and Quads (Vasus Medialias) and (top of) calves Though I don't quite understand how to incorporate foam rolling into the long term, I do know that after foam rolling problematic areas, I feel relief in the crossed legged position and squat For example, I've shared on this forum that I've had pain around the knee but I've learned that with the foam roller, I can bring on the painful sensation and by doing so, helps me pinpoint the elusive, hard to reach tight muscles I'd like to do some light research / minor reading on foam rolling but my intuition tells me that I'm loosening up the fascia I find that I can hit certain spots that are stiff that I haven't quite been able to access with stretching I'd like to continue experimenting with both foam rolling and try to find some exercises that can target these same tender areas

Oh a couple more observations about lying relaxation practice. The guided scripts that I like the most tend to have cues and reminders for: Pulling the chin back to lengthen the neck - didn't realize how much my chin protrudes out, probably causing unnecessary neck tension Tilt the pelvis and lightly contract glutes to relax lower back against the floor - I'm finding ... about 2 weeks into regularly performing lying relaxation practice that when I lay down and get into the starting position, my lower back is inching closer and closer to the ground whereas before there was a considerable gap between the mat an d lower back

To clarify, the sharp knee pain can be brought on by when (sitting crossed legged) I apply pressure in the similar fashion to the way Kit does so in his "Working the outside ankle (inversion; supination)" YouTube clip. So again, I think for my body I am on to something about working my (R) ankle to reduce my knee pain. Just a hunch. Will continue experimenting over next couple weeks.