Your strength will be more stable if you can use it through flexibility: a greater range of movement.
When focusing on strengthening and toning, we’re often faced with a double edged sword. Strength training can leave our muscles tight and, if done with solely a focus on aesthetics or for other reasons without consideration for how we use our muscles or what smaller muscles we need to support them, we might find the strength we are building does not have the effect we hope it had. That is because, like so many aspects of our fitness, flexibility and strength go hand in hand, as do flexibility and many other aspects of our fitness. So if you have fitness goals outside of your flexibility, you may want to consider including flexibility training in your workout routine as well.
What is flexibility?
Flexibility, as defined by UC Davis Health is “the ability of a joint or series of joints to move through an unrestricted, pain free range of motion”. In other words, flexibility is how able we are to move our bodies freely. While what might spring to mind when you think of flexibility is gymnasts tumbling in the Olympics or ballerinas kicking their legs above their heads, flexibility is not only stretching to these extremes. There’s lots of ways that flexibility is important to us on a daily basis.
Are we born flexible?
You might remember back in elementary school when taking stretch tests in physical education classes or warming up for sports with your friends, some people could flop right over and touch their toes while some people would get nowhere close. It is true, genetics can affect our flexibility. But that doesn’t mean that there’s no reason to work on your flexibility if you don’t consider yourself someone who was born flexible. Flexibility can be improved through consistent focus on posture, stretching, and strengthening.
Why flexibility matters
Apart from a cool party trick of impressing people by sliding into the splits, why should you even want to be flexible? As it turns out, there’s a lot of reasons. For one, stretching can help improve your range of motion. If quality of life is one of the reasons that fitness is important to you, range of motion should be an important consideration in your workout planning because in order for your strength training to work for you, the strength has to be able to be used through the movements you want to do. As we age, range of motion can also decrease which means you may want to consider focusing more on flexibility.
Moreover, flexibility can help us avoid injury. As described by Very Well Health, “tight muscles can cause poor posture and increase the risk of injury” so therefore if we focus on loosening our muscles through flexibility training we may also be able to loosen muscles, increase posture, and decrease risk of injury. Flexibility can also increase our circulation and improve coordination.
Classes that target flexibility
Here at OYF, we have plenty of options for targeting flexibility. To start, yoga is a great place to target flexibility, so any of our yoga offerings like Hatha Yoga, Hot Yang Yin Yoga, or Hot Yoga Freedom Flow could be a great place to get started. If there’s a specific area of your body where you’re most interested in growing your flexibility, look for a class with a focus on this region. Additional classes that are great for flexibility include Hot 20/20/20, which ends with a twenty minute focus on stretching, and Hot Candlelight Deep Stretch and Relaxation.
Find the class that works right for you at our full schedule here, and don’t forget to keep up your strength training while you’re improving your flexibility too!