Less is More; Reflections from a Beginner

[IanSDW]

Today while I was stretching I had a thought that I wanted to share, and hopefully this is the right section.

I want to share this because as a beginner, sometimes the complexity of stretch therapy can be overwhelming, and I wanted to share a struggle and realization of mine that may help other newcomers in the future.

A significant mindset shift that i needed to make was that I CANNOT do everything all at once. A pattern I fall into is I would find an exercise; try it. Fail. Maybe it hurt me. I would get frustrated. Try something else. And repeat. Never progressing.

At least what I realized is a lot of these exercise are shown in the ideal end result, when you already have a bit of progress under your belt. BUT you don't have to do the whole exercise to get a benefit from it. Instead of trying to go all the way to the end of an exercise, which would inevitably frustrate me; I now go to the start position and take a much more gentle approach, slowly progressing to the final form of the exercise and stopping to observe tightness and changes in the body as I move on.

An example is my desperation to get a good hip flexor stretch. This video below has been the bane of my existence. Every time I get in the final form I am so uncomfortable that I just cant seem to get any benefit out of it.

So, today I took a little bit of a different approach. I got on my knees, put one foot out preparing to lean forward, and I already started to feel tight, so I stopped and just let that be for a moment. After, I widened the spread of my legs a little bit and let that be. And slowly I got into a better position, observing how changes in my hip position and width of my length spread would change the sensation in my hip flexors. I never completely finished it off like in this video, but that can only come with time

This is a long winded way of saying, to myself, and others who struggle with these exercises, that I think at the beginning LESS is MORE. Patiently working your way up to a full exercise is the key to success.

Hopefully someone will find this useful

 

 

[Nathan]

9 hours ago, IanSDW said:

I now go to the start position and take a much more gentle approach, slowly progressing to the final form of the exercise and stopping to observe tightness and changes in the body as I move on.

Beautiful. NOW you're doing Stretch Therapy 

Thank you for sharing!

[Pat (pogo69)]

15 hours ago, IanSDW said:

This is a long winded way of saying, to myself, and others who struggle with these exercises, that I think at the beginning LESS is MORE. Patiently working your way up to a full exercise is the key to success.

Excellent observations, and realisations.

There are also myriad reasons why certain exercises may not work for you, at the current time.  Immobility, hypomobility, hypermobility, restrictions; confounding issues with other areas, both directly connected and sometimes elsewhere entirely; can all make it difficult to either get into position, experience stretch sensations, appreciate optimal benefit.  None of which is to say that you should necessarily avoid the exercise, but that others may work better for you in that moment.

I (currently) rarely get much out of the exercise you linked.  I have tried all manner of manipulations, but never seem to experience much of a stretch sensation in the hip-flexors.  I do, however, find the solo wall hip-flexor stretch to be golden.  But that may change, as my body does.

I have similar experiences with the piriformis exercises.  Some work much better than others.  Some (and some variations) work better on one side than the other, and vice versa.

[Kit_L]

On 3/31/2020 at 2:07 AM, IanSDW said:

This is a long winded way of saying, to myself, and others who struggle with these exercises, that I think at the beginning LESS is MORE. Patiently working your way up to a full exercise is the key to success.

It always surprises me that so many people expect to be able to do an exercise the first time they try—not addressing this to you, at all, but why would anyone expect that? It'd be like watching someone deadlift 400Kg, and be disappointed that you couldn't do it too! And in the frame from the video, see what the on-screen cue says? Try to straighten the leg, not "Straighten the leg!" To me, this means that you just do as much as you can, in this session, in that moment, feel the sensations, make small movements, let as much tension go as you can.

@Nathan hit the nail on the head: Now you are doing Stretch Therapy! What you describe is exactly what we actually urge people to do, and we definitely say all this in the books and on workshops (but not so much in the videos, because ten minutes seems to be the practical limit, attention-wise).

Less is more in this instance; that and "Relax, more". Thanks for posting this: it's gold. How wonderful you found it by yourself, too; you can never unlearn this.