Maximize Split Flexibility For Better Routines: Drills, Stretching, & Science Summary

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode
of the Shift Show, where mynumber one goal is to bring you
the tools, ideas and the latestscience to help you change
gymnast lives.
My name is Dave Tilley.
Today on the podcast, I wantedto include just a bit of a hip
flexibility and kind of leapsjumps, all of that together, a
little webinar that I did lastyear for the Hero Lab, because
right now a lot of people, as weget closer to season, are kind

(00:33):
of asking for those last littletips to help improve some of
their scores, some of their meatperformance, some of their
aesthetics.
So this is really somethingthat I think I've spent a lot of
time working on and researchingwith.
You know what is the science offlexibility?
How do we improve hipflexibility, split flexibility
safely, but in a way thatactually shows up in routines,
things like that.
It's one thing to have a spliton the floor, it's another thing
to actually have it show up insome sort of routine, whether

(00:55):
it's, you know, men's pommelhorse or parallel bars for
stradaps, things like that.
So I wanted to include this foreveryone to kind of have a nice
little helping hand as we gointo the season itself All the
visuals, things like that, areinside the Hero Lab, which is
linked down below, if you wouldall like to check that out and
sign up.
Hope you all enjoy this webinar.
Alrighty, hello everybody, andwelcome back to another month of

(01:18):
the Hero Lab webinars.
I'm really excited for this one.
I think we're going to talkabout something that everybody
kind of has questions about.
Everybody struggles with myselfincluded, sometimes with the
athletes that I work with andwe're really going to be talking
all about hip flexibility.
So we're going to talk abouteverything that you could
possibly need and theinformation both practically in
terms of what drills andexercises I think are really

(01:39):
really valuable, but also thescientific kind of support
behind those, and trying to findthe blend here of you know what
is going to make things youknow move the needle and what's
going to really get kids' hipsmore mobile, but also what's
going to be the most effectiveand safe method at the same time
.
And so I think there's probablynot a single person reading
this or watching this webinar ordoing this that hasn't made

(01:59):
some mistakes with hipflexibility training and has had
to kind of learn the hard wayaches with hip flexibility
training and has had to kind oflearn the hard way.
And you know I'll be the numberone person to put myself in
front of the guilty line of, youknow, doing things that are
just kind of passed down to meand not really understanding why
I'm doing them, and just kindof pushing kids in splits, kind
of thinking that's how we'regoing to get them more mobile.
And you know, I unfortunatelyhave to just admit that my lack

(02:20):
of education as a young coachhas definitely hurt some
athletes, not intentionally, butover time, not using the best
methods has caused some injuries.
I'll review some of the casestudies that I've worked with
that have been really, reallyhelpful to help me learn more
and to make me open my mind.
A champion where I work I seeso many athletes for hip
injuries it's crazy A gymnast,ballet dancers also but just so

(02:44):
many gymnasts that have problemswith hips anywhere from the
recreational, just general levelall the way up to the elite
internationals who havehamstring issues or have hip
flexor strains or have labraltears in their hips.
So the goal of this webinar isreally to give you guys all of
my experiences from meeting andtalking to a lot of people, but
also combine the ideas of many,many hardworking researchers

(03:04):
around the world who are maybehip surgeons or, you know,
physical therapists or arestrength conditioning coaches,
to kind of give you guys thebest tools to use Right.
So let's just start with.
The most kind of obvious thingis that you know I get where
everyone's coming from, and thisis something I ask myself every
single day when I'm workingwith athletes about, like, how
do I help you get more mobile?
How do I get you splits?
How do I get you a stall there?
How do I get you, you know,pommel horse swings, or how do I

(03:25):
get you in bars on high bar?
You know, but but not hurt you.
You know, how am I?
How can I help you get betterwithout really causing you to
have sore hips or to have, youknow, long-term problems with
your, with your hips in terms ofinjuries?
Especially as a younger coach,I was like man, how do I help
you?
But what I found is that just somuch information on the
internet.
It's insane when it comes downto hip mobility and hip

(03:47):
flexibility.
If you Google hip mobility,you'll get thousands and
thousands of hits right.
So if you have all thatinformation from the internet,
but also maybe camps and clinicsand groups online and things
like that.
There's probably a lot ofreally good information in there
, but sifting through it andtrying to find what works for
you and your athletes and and,honestly, why it's important to
do these drills and what's thescience and the reasoning behind

(04:09):
them, that is like informationoverload to the max.
And if you take that and youcombine that with you know,
honestly, just athletes whoweren't making progress the way
that I wanted them to or the waythat they wanted to, uh that's
just really really frustrating.
Uh, it makes you feel inpractice like geez, why is this
not working?
Like what's going on here, andit makes you feel really
overwhelmed.
You know, I used to feel reallyoverwhelmed that coaches, other

(04:29):
coaches or parents or you knowthe athletes were asking me what
to do and I was giving themexercises and it wasn't working.
And then it kind of made mefeel like, oh man, why isn't
this working?
Like I felt really bad aboutthe fact that they still had bad
splits and they still hadissues.
So I felt really stuck, youknow, and that's kind of what
led me five years ago to kind ofgo down the warpath of just
being a massive nerd and readinga lot and trying to talk with

(04:50):
people and just tinker and trynew things and see what works.
You know combining myexperiences that I learned from
my coaches, but also you knowwhat the new research said in
the medical world and thestrength conditioning literature
and some of the hip surgeryresearch.
So that's kind of where we'regoing here.
All right, and let's just behonest, saying that you know me
trying to do things.
A few years ago I, you know, hadall these drills and I had all

(05:10):
these ideas and I was like, oh,this is going to go great.
I know exactly what's going tohappen.
They're going to, you know, dothese for a couple of days and
then boom everyone.
And reality is that it doesn'twork that way.
You know it's not always aperfect method where you learn
some drills, try it and it goessmoothly.
I think everybody probablylistening to this or reading

(05:31):
this can understand that it'snot as much simplicity as you
think and it's the kidsfollowing along and
understanding and beingconsistent and all that kind of
stuff kind of doesn't reallywork.
So kind of keep that in theback of your mind, that like
it's okay, like there's going tobe a lot of tinkering that goes
into this kind of process here,and then, even more so than
that, is that me trying to dothose programs after I learned

(05:52):
was.
You know, I felt really goodabout it.
I was like, oh, we're going touse these drills, these
equipment.
It's going to like absolutely anightmare to try to get people
on the right drills and set upand I don't have enough time and
there's no space.
There's classes in the way,like all this other stuff.
So, you know, take all theseprinciples that we teach you and

(06:13):
, uh, you know, apply them andhow you feel they're fit and
what you think is best for yourgym.
Don't think I tried to do is notonly give you exercises that I
feel are really, really valuable, but also give you a
step-by-step kind of processabout how you approach.
You know, okay, I see anathlete who doesn't have a good
split.

(06:33):
What's the first thing thatgoes through my mind?
Okay, what's what's the secondthing I do after I do the first
thing?
And kind of giving you analgorithm.
It's called to be like okay,this, then this, then this, then
this, and then you can plug inall the drills that you like,
things that fit your equipment,things that fit your time, the
amount of staff that you have,and the cool thing is that if
you learn the system, you canthen add in new drills as you
find them or you can tweakthings based on the athlete.

(06:55):
You're not stuck in this rigidbox of doing three or four
drills every single day or juststretching for 20 minutes and
over splits every single day.
You know it gives you a littlebit more, you know, kind of
understanding of why you'redoing it and then it allows you
to kind of be in control and say, okay, I see this problem, let
me try to make this asindividualized to the athlete as
possible.
Okay, and then let's take a bigstep back and think about you

(07:16):
know, yes, it's good forgymnastics and injuries, but you
know what's the really thebiggest reason?
We need better flexibility,right?
So if you take somebody likethis this is a medical screen
for someone for hip flexorstiffness and for quad stiffness
.
It's called the Thomas test andI'll talk about that later.
But if you take somebody whohas a really stiff hip flexor,
like you can kind of see her legis not in line and parallel
with the table.
That's kind of what we'relooking at.

(07:37):
If you take somebody who hasthis limited hip stiffness and
you add that on top of a lot ofback handsprings, right, what
unfortunately you can get isthis right and I think, for
someone who's maybe not amedical provider, what you can
see over here in this line hereyou know well that is a L5
spondy fracture.
That's a stress fracture in thespine and people have called
this like a stress fracture.
They've called it a spondyfracture.

(07:59):
You know just different medicalterms to refer to what's going
on here.
And essentially what's happenedis that she's she's put so much
pressure on this, this boneright here, this joint from
backbending without using herhips and kind of putting it on
her lower back is that she'scaused that bone to get inflamed
and then it became from astress reaction, it became a
full fracture and now what'shappening is this eight
millimeters you can see is thather spine bone on top is

(08:20):
actually sliding forward andthat's putting a lot of pressure
on some of the lower backstructures.
This is, unfortunately, acareer-ending spondy fracture
where the athlete was unable toget back to gymnastics.
It was in so much pain I justcouldn't do it.
This is not taken from Google.
This is not taken from amedical journal that I found.
This is one of my athletes thatI coached five years ago.
This was a level nine that weworked with.

(08:41):
That was a senior.
She really wanted to go tocollege and compete, but
unfortunately this all caught upwith her and it caused her to
have a lower back fracture.
That was really hard foreveryone involved.
It was hard for me because atthe time I was just at a grad
school.
I was her physical therapistwho was trying to help her.
I was also her coach who wastrying to make her programs and
get her better.
Her parents were reallystruggling with the amount of

(09:01):
pain she was in rightfully soand all of the coaches felt
really overwhelmed and it wasjust devastating to watch her go
through that at the end of hersenior year and she ultimately
decided to not do gymnastics.
She transferred schools anddidn't pursue her college
gymnastics career.
That was really hard for all ofus involved.
So I really hope people canfeel the gravity of that
decision that I not decision,but the decisions that I was

(09:23):
making in practice and PT thatwere leading to, unfortunately,
not the best results and I wrotea blog post about this called
the Worst Day in my CoachingCareer and that was when she
called me and told me she hadthis stress fracture.
So you know, this is why we needto think about flexibility.
It's like, yes, it's importantto have beautiful back
handsprings and leaps and jumps,but in terms of health and a
quality of life, this isflexibility in hip and shoulder.

(09:45):
Another lecture we talked aboutis one of the most important
things to think about.
With lower back injuries andmany other injuries as well, we
get the actual injury, but then,on top of that, look at all
these things that always comealong with one of these big time
back injuries or hip injuries.
Now they're at risk for anotherinjury.
Myself, as a coach, super,super anxious.
I definitely felt helpless whenI couldn't help her.

(10:05):
She missed a ton of time inpractice, she had huge mental
blocks on skills, she wasn'tmaking progress, obviously
because she was in a lot of pain, she wasn't training and then,
you know, she was unable tocompete.
But even if we have an athletewho doesn't have a severe back
injury like this, they're justalways struggling with limited
hip flexibility.
Right, they're not going to doit well meets, and then,
rightfully so, like I said, herparents were, you know, really,
really worried about what wasgoing to happen to her back long

(10:26):
term, and so is she.
That's kind of where we'removing here, and the upside to
this is that now, uh, thankfully, because you're here and you're
dedicated to learning more,you're going to be able to help
these athletes.
You're not going to let themslip through the cracks.
Um, so this is you, but this islike a step-by-step algorithm
that I kind of have created inthe last five years from all the
people I've been lucky to learnfrom and all the things that

(10:47):
I've been lucky to read that areavailable to me.
So if you take this kind ofstep-by-step process and you add
that on top of a ton ofpatients, that's going to be the
number one thing is just reallyunderstanding that these things
take weeks, not hoursCommunicating with the athlete,
the parents, other coaches,medical providers, really having
an open mind to learn newinformation about how to best
help the athlete, trying tocombine those thoughts into a

(11:09):
team plan where we can all worktogether.
Maybe a medical provider helpsout with some of the soft tissue
work and some of the specificexercises and pain management.
Maybe the coach is the onemodifying their technique.
Maybe the parent is the onewho's supporting them in terms
of helping them have theresources and get to the medical
appointments or get to the gymor whatever.
It is right, like everyone'skind of helping along with the
athlete taking care ofthemselves.
You got a lot more patients ontop of that, right?

(11:31):
Well, that's going to increasethe possibility of a better hip
flexor stiffness, right.
And now we're going to havemore hip mobility, which is
fantastic, right, it's probablygoing to lead to better leaps,
better jumps.
That's awesome.
That's good performance.
We want that.
So now we have maybe, you know,less injury.
We have more, uh, you know,actual gymnastics, specific
progress and, honestly, thereason that I'm still coaching,
the reason that many of us arestill coaching, is for this,

(11:51):
right.
That's really why we're doingall this.
This is why we take so muchtime, and I think that the happy
emotions, the values gymnasticsteaches, the amazing things
that people can learn from thesport and what it sets people up
to do later in life is honestlythe biggest reason that many of
us are still involved ingymnastics.
And this is not a you know, I'mnot a personal UCLA bandwagon.
I enjoy all of NCAA gymnastics,but they just happened to win

(12:14):
last year, so I put them up.
But you know that celebration,that excitement, that being
proud of your team, that youknow being part of something
bigger than yourself.
You know that's really what'sgoing on.
So take it from that big kindof meta level all the way back
down to, okay, if I can fix yourhip flexibility and help you
and maybe make you not be assore and make you perform better

(12:34):
, you can be a part of somethingreally, really big.
Whether that's just your localcommunity it doesn't involve any
competitive gymnastics at allor whether that involves
high-level NCAA or internationalcompetition.
As we give you more tools here,realize that this process of
flexibility in general is justso not what you think it's going
to be, and it was for me.
I spent so much time studyingand learning.
I was like I got this, this isgoing to be great.
And then I was like, okay, I'mgoing to go.
I got this plan and then boom,I'm going to win.
These kids are going to getbetter, they're going to have

(12:56):
good flexibility, it's goingright.
It was like up and down, up anddown, up and down.
Like I consider these flag postsas little, like mini markers of
like oh, we're working.
It's like it's something,something's making progress,
like maybe this little flag hereis like one leap that looks
really really good after a fewweeks of working on this, like,
oh, that looked pretty good,right.
And then the next one up hereis you know, maybe they do
something, they hit a bigroutine they've never hit before

(13:18):
, because you know it looks waysmoother.
They get a good score oh, thatwas awesome too.
And then maybe they theyfinally get a good, uh, you know
an in bar around with a nicestall there.
They have their split goes allthe way down and one day you're
like, hey, look at that, that's,that's getting pretty good.
You know, those are all thoselittle tiny wins, so take it way
more with that patient'scollaboration mindset and the

(13:44):
fact that you're going to haveto talk about before we move on
to the fun stuff is that youknow this is just a straight up
reality of gymnastics andhonestly, one of the biggest
reasons I started the Hero Labin general is because we have
never had in gymnastics a higherrate of injuries and burnout.
Right, it's just unbelievablehow many kids are getting hip
injuries, how many kids aregetting back injuries and how
many kids are just deciding thatthey don't want to do

(14:05):
gymnastics anymore becausethey're worried about their
health.
And if you stack that on top ofa lot of athletes who are just
not performing the way that theywant, the way that their
parents and coaches want right,they're not making progress in
skills or levels, that kind ofadds up to be quite an
unfortunate situation in termsof what's going on right and on
the PT side of things notcoaching the athletes that I
work with.
Just as a medical provider whotreats a lot of gymnasts right,

(14:27):
I've had 34 gymnasts who havehad stress fractures in their
back or some sort of overusedtear in their hip.
In the last you know, season Iwould say I've had 20 people who
lost their competitive year,just didn't compete at all.
They either started and thengot hurt in their hip or their
back and then, or they couldn'tfinish.
Later in the year I've hadthree who had massive hip
surgery.
So like label repair, boneshaving, you know, tying

(14:48):
ligaments back together, likecrazy stuff that like not only
is not even about gymnastics,it's about quality of life.
And then I've had 12 peoplethis year, you know, who have
quit.
So I've had athletes who hadsuch bad back pain.
They couldn't uh, you know,compete and they're worried
about their long-term health sothey stopped training.
Or, you know, hip injuries theycouldn't get back from him,
like hamstring growth platefractures.
That their parents were likethis is just crazy.

(15:09):
There's no way that we can keepthem in gymnastics.
My, my daughter can't even likedrive, you know, you know,
can't drive in the car with meand she can't sit in school,
like kind of transcends just thegymnastics performance stuff.
So, you know, that's kind of areally scary stat.
That's only for my localcommunity in the northeast of
Boston.
I work with some peopleconsulting online, but it's a
very small amount of people thatI actually treat here around

(15:32):
the area, so I haven't reallyincluded everybody that I've
talked with via email that arestruggling too, but this is just
really really tough to listento and to hear about.
So this is kind of why thislecture is so important.
So if you really only rememberone thing from the entire
lecture which I hope you don't,but I hope that, uh, you know,
this kind of step-by-stepalgorithm is really really uh, I
guess all the five to 10 yearsthat I've been doing of work and

(15:54):
hip flexibility put into oneslide which is I don't know
slightly a little bit, uh,saddening.
I guess it was a little bit.
But all the research I'velearned from all the people I've
been lucky to learn fromcoaching, I'm really lucky that
I work with some of the bestmedical providers in the world
and I've been able to travelaround the world and talk with
these people and I kind of justabsorb and soak up all the
things they find really valuableand I combine it with what I

(16:18):
kind of think about and this iskind of the step-by-step process
we'll talk about.
We'll talk about, like,starting with the base and then
working from screening to softtissue care and strength and
control and technique.
And if you've, if you listenedto or you've read the shoulder
webinar, you're going to see alot of similarities between this
lecture already.
Right and I did thatintentionally because it's the
same system, right, whetheryou're talking about the upper
body or the lower body, the samekind of step by step process is

(16:39):
going to occur and you'll see alot of differences in the
exercises and some of theanatomy, but it really matters
that you understand that this iskind of a good approach for
most of these things.
It's not only about doing thebest flexibility drill or the
best active flex drill or havingthe best strength program.
It's all of these things puttogether.
It's really going to be whereyou win, okay, so, starting from

(16:59):
your cultures, your values andyour habits, when it comes down
to hip flexibility, do no harm.
You should not be hurtingsomeone's hips.
You should not be causingsomeone to get worse with your
flexibility program, and that'snot a malicious intent thing.
It's oftentimes just a lack ofeducation or maybe just not
understanding the hip anatomyreally really well, and so I'll
offer you guys the kind of bestpractices I find.

(17:20):
But that's the number onethings If you find athletes are
getting really sore hips andcan't move forward, you have to
stop and you have to say, okay,how can I learn more?
What do I need to do?
Who do I need to talk to?
How can I find someone who'sgoing to give me some more
information about this before wehave more problems?
Okay, all the research ispretty clear that consistency is
more important than intensity.
Right, finding a good screenand doing three or four things

(17:42):
every single day that are basedon really good science, and also
the end goal of whatevergymnastic skill they need to
improve upon.
Right, that's going to be waymore important than kind of
having one epic 20 to 30 minuteover split session or, you know,
weight stretching or thingslike that.
Like that, that is just goingto be a little bit too hardcore
and it might overdose.
Somebody, instead of gettingjust consistent practice
throughout the entire week andthroughout maybe a couple months

(18:04):
, go with somebody instead ofgetting just consistent practice
throughout the entire week andthroughout maybe a couple months
.
Trying to take the best of whatthe research says plus what the
best expert coaching opinionsays is really important.
Gymnastics is a weird sportthat has really unique hip
demands and I think that if youonly follow the research and
just blindly ignore what coachesthink is valuable, you're
probably going to miss the boat,because it won't be specific to
our sport, and especially withhips, more so than shoulders, is

(18:25):
that, uh, there's no twoathletes, hips that are the same
, and I think the worst thingthat you can do and that I've
done in the past, so I'm guiltyas well, but is is go to a camp
or look online for a drill orfind something that looks really
, really good and like, oh man,this would be awesome.
And you go to practice and youmake all of your girls just do
this stall bar drill or allthese girls do this leap drill,
right, and it's like a bellcurve for the middle of the pack

(18:46):
.
You know, maybe 60% of theathletes it's just going to,
it's going to be okay, it's notgoing to be amazing, it's not
going to be awful, right, butfor 20% of those athletes it
might do really really well.
Remember that maybe 20% ofthose athletes it's going to
hurt, right?
So if you just blindly applyflexibility drills,
understanding the anatomy andwhy you're doing it and how,
maybe one athlete might have tochange the drill or do a
different drill because of that,you could really hurt somebody,

(19:06):
and you could really not onlyhurt somebody.
You can make some seriousstalls.
And how much progress you'regoing to make.
You can sit there spinning yourwheels for weeks and weeks and
weeks and not, excuse me, seeprogress, because it's just not
specific to them, right?
If you try to, you know, use ascrewdriver to bang a hammer
nail and it's not going to gowell.
So you got to make sure youhave the right tool for the
right job, okay.
And then, lastly, it's kind ofcombines everything is just

(19:27):
happily a mutt right.
Don't be afraid to learn fromPTs, ats, chiropractors, you
know, coaches, sports scientistseverybody has an opinion that's
probably valid as long as it'sbased on really sound quality
evidence or expert coachingexperience.
So we always start withscreening and I think in the
shoulder lecture you might haveseen that we do that kind of
seated wall screen.
Well, in gymnastics, I thinkthe best way to do this is

(19:48):
probably starting with just asplit floor screen and we'll
show these videos so you guysunderstand.
But you want to make sure thatit's kind of standardized right.
So drawing a line in the ground, putting them close to a wall,
trying to make sure that it'sconsistently done at the same
exact thing, what same exactthing.

(20:08):
What you do is you're going tohave the athlete do a split and
a line and they're going to usea measurement stick next to
their own hip and kind ofmeasure against the wall and see
how far they are off the groundand that just helps give a
little bit of a window ofinsight into where they're at
and if they're going to makeprogress.
You'll see that split slidedown over a few weeks.
And there's other things that Ireally really needed to, and
this lecture has a little bitmore in-depth than some previous
lectures I've given on thistopic because I want people to
really understand it.
But there's a lot more specifictests that you can do.

(20:29):
I always recommend people dothem with a medical provider.
If you're a coach, do it with amedical provider.
If you're a medical provider,there's even more really
in-depth hip-specific screeningand medical assessments that are
really really good and I thinkthat you guys should always
collaborate together.
And again, if you're curiousabout some of these articles or
what you want to learn from,always in my articles or my
research presentations I try toput down these articles in the

(20:51):
bottom.
So, like one through 11 has allthese kinds of hip surgery
screens and hip anatomy screensthat we'll talk about.
Okay, so it's up here on theright-hand corner, right
Starting on the line.
She obviously has a full splitand that's not the common thing
that we find.
I just used her because Iwanted to have a really good
example, but she would come up alittle bit closer and be next
to this tape line which hasinches on the wall and she goes

(21:11):
down and she puts the goniometeror this ruler thing that I'm
holding and kind of measures offthe ground.
If she's far so, she puts themeasurement thing on her own
thigh, right where her hip boneis, and that caused her to go
out.
And, like I said, there's thisis a really good gymnastics
general screen we do.
But there's many other thingsthat you can do that are
specific to you know, more hipmobility, right.
So we already talked about this.

(21:32):
This Thomas test, it's called,where they lay down and we're
looking for the thigh to beparallel, which you can see here
.
It is that tells us her hipflexor is nice and flexible.
And we also like to see can theknee bend to 90 degrees, right
here?
So if the hip is flat and theknee is bent, that kind of is
telling you that you have reallygood hip flexor and quad
stiffness or, sorry, that youhave really good hip flexor and
quad flexibility.
So you can do that one, right.

(21:56):
You can do a straight leg raise.
You can do a band assistedstraight leg raise.
You can do what's called afavor test you can do.
You hold the hip and it dropsit down.
You want to be about one fistwidth away from the table here,
right.
But these are all medical,specific screens that are
general, and even past this,there's there's things called
the Craig test or x-rays.
There's soft tissue assessments, there's range of motion
assessments.
There's so many things that youcan.
You can do with a good medicalassessment to narrow in on.
Okay, it's, it's not thehamstring, it's the, it's the

(22:17):
quad here and it's the innerthigh right or like okay, maybe
it's not the hip flexorstiffness, it's maybe an arched
pelvis position, or maybe it'ssomething going on with their
ankles causing them to arch whenthey land.
There's a lot of differentreasons why somebody can not
have hip mobility and I thinkstarting here for coaches or for
general people is good, butalways partner up with a medical

(22:38):
provider who really understandship anatomy so they can give
you a much more specific plan.
Taking a little bit of a peek atthe anatomy, which I think is
really important, and taking alittle bit of a peek at the
anatomy, which I think is reallyimportant, and I don't want to
go super in depth because it canbe really, really wonky.
But you just think about layers, right, there's three layers to
our, to our hip joint and ourshoulder joint that are really
important.
So you have layer one, which isthe bones.
Right you have this, your yourhip.
Here.
You have your pelvis cup, whichis called your acetabulum right

(23:00):
, and then you have the actualhip bone.
So you have pelvis, you havethe acetabulum, which is kind of
like a socket, and then youhave a circular structure that
sits inside of it with a longbone that's called your femur.
So you have your femoral head,then you have your femur bone
and if you look down at your ownthigh you can look like your
quad muscle.
Your thigh muscle is this femurhere.
And if you put your fingerskind of up and kind of feel the
bony points around your hip,that's kind of the pelvis and

(23:22):
that's deeper down there wouldbe the acetabulum.
So don't think about it more indepth than that, unless you're
a PT and you want to learn a lotmore in AT or Cairo.
But just thinking that thisbony layer is something that
really can't change.
You know, you're just kind ofborn with it.
Some people have, you know,shallow hip sockets.
Some people have really deephip sockets.
Some people have weird notweird, but just abnormal turns
in their hips or their toesrotate more in or out, and if

(23:44):
it's a structural thing in theirbones you can't change that.
It doesn't matter how muchstretching you do or how much
active flex you do, it's notgoing to change.
And so you have to reallyunderstand that if someone is
not making progress in theirflexibility, you have to rule
out that it's a bony problemfirst, because if it is a bony
problem and you're stretchinglike crazy, you're not going to
make good progress and you'reprobably really gonna hurt
somebody if you keep pushing.
So layer one bones okay.

(24:06):
Layer two is kind of going to bethe next thing, which is like
your ligaments right.
So these ligaments lay overthis, this kind of joint, and
they help secure it.
You have a bunch in the front,you have a bunch underneath and
you have a bunch in the back andyou also have something down in
your hip socket.
It's called your labrum.
So essentially it's just like adeep suction seal of
Fibroartilage that helps to kindof again secure the vacuum they

(24:27):
call it in your hip joint.
It's got to be a really, reallytight seal to make sure it's
got good stability.
So this labrum just helps todeepen that seal and the
ligaments around your hip jointkind of help hold it in firm in
place.
Gymnasts tend to have reallyreally loose ligaments, which is
not going to be, you know, aproblem.
Sometimes it's really good forthem because they can do
gymnastics well.
But, that being said, if youhave loose ligaments right,

(24:49):
naturally, and you have someonewho's maybe not the most support
in their bony area, right, wereally don't want to be putting
pressure on these ligaments andthis labrum here, because once
you start getting into tuggingon that, it can cause a lot of
injuries, labral tears, someother issues related to hip
instability, and we want toreally make sure that the
stretching that we're doing andthe soft tissue care that we're
doing is specific to the thirdlayer, which would be the

(25:12):
muscles, right.
So this is going to beeverything that we kind of know
about.
We know about the hip flexorthat passes in the front, the
groin muscles on the inside.
Here the quad is on the front,the hamstring on the back.
That's the third layer, right,we had bones and then we had
ligaments in the labrum, whichwould be layer two they call it
the passive layer and then wehave layer three, which would be
the muscles themselves.
So inner thigh, hip flexor,quad, things like that those

(25:34):
muscles can become very stiffand overworked with.
Think about gymnastics.
You squeeze your legs togetherall day long, right.
You keep your knees straightall day long.
You use your hip flexors a tonright.
So the muscles around your hipcan become very overworked and
stiff.
And if the muscles are stiffand the ligaments are a little
bit loosey-goosey, right, thatbecomes the problem where
someone who's not, you know,necessarily the most mobile has

(25:55):
a lot of motion at their hipjoint and that can start to
cause irritation.
So I don't want to go deeperthan that, no pun intended,
because of how complex theanatomy can be.
But if you're someone who'sthinking about how do I help
somebody, you want to focus onthe muscles themselves and you
want to take away stretches ortake away things that are
putting extra pressure on theirligaments, and we'll talk about
that a little bit If you'retrying to feel a little bit more

(26:15):
nerdier.
So these are kind of the capsuleand the ligament, kind of stuff
of the hip that's reallyimportant to kind of understand
from a medical point of view.
So I'll breeze through this.
But the front of the hip, youhave your iliofemoral ligament
that kind of goes from yourpelvis to your hip.
Here, right, you have a what'scalled a lateral band or a
medial band and they attach atdifferent points.
Again, if you're a coach andyou know you don't want to get

(26:43):
too overwhelmed, that's totallyfine kicking motions and it kind
of prevents the hip fromsliding downwards.
And then, lastly, in the backyou have the posterior capsular,
what's called the ischiofemoralligament.
So this is more to prevent yourhip from kind of sliding out in
the back and it also helps youto give a lot of flexibility to
bend your hip up towards yourchest.
Okay, these are all the musclesthat kind of go through.
There's some nerves in here tooand some bones.

(27:03):
But kind of ignore the text andjust kind of look at the
density of muscles we havearound our hip.
Right we have hip flexors, wehave an inner muscle called our
sartorius quad, inner thighright the back has hamstrings,
calf glutes, like there's tonsof stuff in here that gets
overworked in gymn.
More motion to happen from withstretching and foam rolling and

(27:25):
some good targeted specificstrength work.
That's going to kind of bewhere we get the most progress.
Okay, so here's a split screen,kind of going back to it.
So here's the left leg rightshe just goes on the line and
then the right leg and again, ifshe had limitation, I would
have her take this little rulerand put it next to her, the line
, and tell me how many inchesoff the ground she's limited,

(27:46):
right.
So straddle, middle and rightpretty easy to do but not bad to
set up.
It's just tape.
We put on a block line and wejust left the tape on there for
a couple of weeks while peoplewere doing screens.
Okay, so what do we do ifthey're limited?
So if they're limited, right,you want to focus on the
hamstring, the inner thigh, thequad muscle first, and then you
want to have that athlete dosome active flexibility drills
next that are appropriate fortheir level.

(28:08):
If it doesn't look that bad andthis happens all the time with
hip flexibilities that you'llsee someone who has pretty
decent splits and they don'treally have any issues on the
screen.
But they just don't jump andleap to their angle, their back
leg doesn't get high enough,their stallers don't seem to be
compressed enough, their pommelflares don't seem to be opened
up, their dip cuts on p-barsdon't seem to be really, really
wide, and you know what thatmight be is that it actually

(28:29):
might just be a strength andactive flexibility technique
issue, right.
So you can have someone who isreally, really stiff and on the
screen, on the floor, they'regoing to be limited, but then
also limited on the equipment,right.
That might be a mobilityproblem.
But you might also haveathletes who are really, really
mobile, right, and they're justnot the strongest ever, or maybe
that's really hard for thembecause they're growing right If
they have really good passiveflexibility in the ground but it

(28:50):
doesn't show up on beam or onbars or on high bar, right.
What you want to do is justthink, okay, we need to get you
stronger, we need to get you alittle bit more controlled with
active flexibility, and we alsoneed to really make sure that
you're doing a ton of techniquework to have that transfer over.
So just kind of think aboutthose two pathways in your mind,
okay.
So the next thing we're goingto do is really talk about soft
tissue care, right, and we'regoing to talk about specific to
the hip versus the shoulder inthe last lecture, right.

(29:12):
Especially with the hip and thefemur, the more you grow and
the more you train, the moreoverworked those muscles get,
right.
If your bones are growingfaster than your hip muscles can
keep up with, that can be areally big issue in terms of
having stiffness in your groinand your quad and in your hip
flexor, but also it can causeyou to really struggle a lot in
gymnastics.
Right, you're going to have toyou know longer legs mean you
got to.

(29:32):
You got to put more muscularforce to lift them up.
You're going to have to do alot harder.
You know, strength drills tosupport some of the ranges of
motion that you need.
Right, if you're overworkingthose muscles because of how
long your legs are and becauseyou're growing, and then you put
that on top of normal, squeezemy legs together, kick my toes,
things like that, that's whythose muscles get so stiff.
And the way we want to kind ofmanage this is through regular

(29:53):
soft tissue care every singleday.
We want to make sure we'redoing specific foam rolling and
specific stretching drills thatare targeting just those muscles
in that third layer, not thefirst or the second layer that
might put pressure on bones orligaments.
And so there's a lot of reallygood articles on like systematic
reviews on you know stretchingfoam rolling.
Why does it work?
What do we think is happening?
And I'll highlight some of them, but I really want people to
have access to all of thesearticles.

(30:14):
If you want to learn more, Iincluded some at the end as well
.
But if you're on the geekierside and you're trying to figure
out, what's the support for mechanging the way that I'm
stretching right?
Why am I going to do certainthings now versus 10 years ago?
A lot of it has to do with theenormous amount of research
that's come out on stretching,foam rolling and hip surgery and
hip injuries and things likethat.
So keep that in mind if youwant to find out more.

(30:35):
Okay, so what are we doing forfoam rolling?
And again, this is based onsome big studies that have
looked at the effects of foamrolling.
Why foam rolling works.
Essentially, we think that it'sgetting the muscle to relax.
It's probably just reducingwhat we call tone or some
stiffness in that muscle interms of blood flow and also
increasing the water content, sohydration of the muscle.
And then it just kind of feelsgood when you do it with a lower
intensity.

(30:55):
Right?
Articles kind of suggest thatwe're definitely not breaking up
scar tissue or doing any.
You know fascial distortion,which is definitely, definitely
a thought that I had in my mindearlier in the day, sorry,
earlier in the in my career, andwhat I what I really realized
is that it kind of makes sense,right, if a foam roller was
enough to break up the fasciaand was to form scar tissue,

(31:16):
then the forces would be so highin gymnastics that you would
absolutely explode when youlanded right.
And that's my friend UrsonRogioso brought that up with.
You know the concept of thesestudies when they first came out
.
It's like man, that makes sense.
If a formal could, you know,break up fascia and distort, you
know, fascial adhesions, thenthe 15 times body weight and
ground reaction forces that adouble back test, you would make
you absolutely explode.
So what we think is nowhappening is that the muscles

(31:38):
are just relaxing because of youknow the way our nervous system
is, just like, oh, that feelspretty good, like, oh, it's a
good massage, like I can justchill and I can relax, and that
reduces that tone of that muscle.
And the research also showsthat going really, really hard
on a foam roller is probablyadverse to what we want.
Again, we just talked aboutmuscle relaxation.
If you're pushing on the foamroller so hard that you're

(31:58):
squinting and sweating and it'slike, oh, my God, this is
terrible, right, your body, ohmy god, this is terrible, right,
your body's probably not goingto respond to that well.
So what the research studiesdid is they had people form
really different intensities,kind of low, zero to one at a 10
discomfort, a middle three tofour, and then a higher end,
eight to nine.
They found that people were inthat kind of middle sweet spot,
did just as well as the peoplewho were rolling really, really
light and actually did a littlebit better than people that were

(32:20):
rolling really, really hard.
So the stretching comes from acouple big reviews, which is
where they look at all these bigresearch studies.
And what they found is thatthey did 26 studies and they did
over a huge statisticalanalysis of like what, how many
days per week, how, what, howlong do you need to stretch and
how much per muscle group shouldyou stretch and what type of
stretching should you do if youwant to make a range of motion

(32:40):
increases.
And we'll highlight the studystudy.
But essentially they said thatabout five minutes of stretching
per week, so about two sets of30 seconds I've done every day,
five days per week, or maybe asix day, not seven, didn't be
seven, wasn't that much moreeffective.
But doing that every single dayper muscle group seemed to be
the most ideal to help increaserange of motion when it was
specific to the muscle groups.

(33:01):
And then, from my point of view, this is not in the research,
but I think the really importantthings are proper alignment and
technique.
And then trying to do thesethings in a circuit, like we'll
talk about doing screening andthen soft tissue work and then
control work and then kind ofstrength work in a row around in
a circuit, is probably going tobe better for you than just
doing one epic stretchingsession long-term.
Okay.
So here's an interesting examplefrom an athlete I work with.

(33:22):
She was a college gymnast whocame home for the summer and she
was having a lot of hip pain onher right side here and she was
having a lot of lower back pain.
And so when I had her do hersplits like look at this, this
is a pretty good split right.
She's a sophomore in collegenow and she has good left split.
Her right split is almost allthe way down, so clearly she has

(33:44):
a stiffness in her hip flexorright.
She's nowhere near flat to theground, if not being a little
bit more.
And then this other test calleda Faber test is called.
It's just there to look atinner thigh flexibility.
And there's versions of thistest where you see, okay, is it
maybe more of the arch in yourback?
And she wasn't that case, right?
Even with those other tests,she definitely had inner thigh
soft tissue problems and her legcan't drop down.

(34:05):
So she doesn't have hip flexorflexibility and doesn't have
inner thigh flexibility, butstill has a full split.
Like, well, what's going on here, right?
Well, you can see here she'scranking on her back and doing
arch to try to get lower andwhat she's probably doing is
she's pulling on those first twolayers of the hip, right, she's
probably pulling on her bonesand she's pulling on her
ligaments a little bit and thoseare stretching out extra to

(34:25):
make up for the limited hipflexor mobility here.
So this is probably why she'shaving so much pain in her hip
and her ligaments and probablythat deep, deep joint structures
are probably getting really,really beat up because they're
trying to get overstretched tomake up for the stiffness.
And this was the product of hermaybe not understanding about
proper hip flexor stretching andquad stretching and thigh
stretching we'll talk about butalso not doing the holistic

(34:46):
program that did active flex andcontrol work, you know, and
strength work and eccentrics,kind of combining everything
together.
She was just doing over splits.
She was just holding over splitfor two minutes and, you know,
it just led to return, limitedreturn on investment and
probably over time, not splitscaused her injury, but over time
, with competing in a prettybrutal competitive season in
college, she started to haveback and hip pain.

(35:08):
Okay, so takeaways here focus onthe muscles, not the ligaments.
And again, consistency is moreimportant than intensity.
Don't go crazy with over splitstretching.
Use this step-by-step processand what the science suggests as
the really kind of the best wayto go about this.
Okay, so here's some justexamples here.
So form rolling of the back ofthe hamstring.
Again, we're doing 10 passes,or about 30 seconds at a three
to four out of 10 discomfortlevel.

(35:29):
So we're going up and down inthe back, going up and down on
the inner thigh and onceathletes know how to do this, it
really only takes like fiveminutes.
It's not as elaborate as youthink and they just go 30
seconds on every muscle group.
So we have all the athletes.
Come in right before practiceand just knock this out in five,
10 minutes, or maybe we do thison a light recovery day.
But there's some quad work thereand I'm going to pause this
here because this one's really,really important.

(35:49):
You see, what happened here isI don't want to knock on any
choreography I think that youknow extended lunge positions in
that deep lunge position isreally valuable for aesthetics
and things like that.
But if our goal is to stretchthe hip flexor and the quad
right, those muscles start atthe pelvis and also the hip
flexor starts up at the spine.
So the more I arch my back andthe more I tip my pelvis forward
, the more I'm slacking thosemuscles.

(36:10):
I'm slacking my hip flexor andI'm slacking my quad because
those muscles anatomically startfrom here and here.
So what I have to do in order toget a really specific muscular
stretch to these areas and nothave the ligaments be over
irritated or have the back cheata little bit, like we saw in
that college gymnast, is I'mgoing to need to hollow myself
in, flex my spine into a roundedposition, really engage my glue

(36:31):
on this side and I'm going topush down on my front thigh to
activate my core a little bit,and you'll see her do that in a
quad and a hip flexor stretch.
And what that does is when youset yourself up in a proper
alignment and then you reallykeep a focus on, okay, brace my
core, squeeze my glute and thenmove forward, right, what you
have is that really, reallymobile athletes who maybe
haven't been stretching the softtissue, they've been cheating
with their ligaments, their backthey start to feel a huge

(36:52):
stretch in their thigh.
And this athlete actually hasfull over splits on all three
sides right, and all she feels astretch with is right there.
So she moves like an inch andshe feels a huge hip flexor
stretch.
And same thing with this oneshe hollows and leans forward.
She just tilts her pelvis alittle bit with her knee fully
bent and in a hollow andsqueezing her glute and pushing
down.
She moves maybe two inchesforward and she feels a huge

(37:13):
thigh stretch right here.
That's what we're talking aboutwith specific muscle-based bias
.
And, yeah, we're going tostretch the ligaments a little
bit and we'll stretch from theback a teeny bit, because you
have to in gymnastics.
But if our goal is to makemuscles more mobile, this is
probably a better approach thanjust that super aggressive lunge
and the way we do it is bothright.
When we warm up and when we dosoft tissue work or we do
flexibility circuits, we focuson just this aspect of a hollow.

(37:35):
And then, when we do dance andchoreography and beam stuff, we,
you know, allow the kids to doa deeper lunge and arch and show
off the aesthetics.
You can see her in a quad hereand we'll see an inner thigh.
It's the same version.
She puts her foot all the wayout to the side lines up, she
hollows down as much as she canand then she rocks backwards so
she feels an inner thigh stretch.
And these are really, reallygood for leg lowers or for
hamstrings.
So what we're doing here iswe're having the athlete lay on

(37:58):
the edge of a block, flexing hercore and pushing down.
She's holding her leg and she'sallowing her leg to drop down
as far as she can until shefeels a stretch in the hamstring
here.
And the reason we like this isbecause it keeps the core
engaged right.
But it also works specific togymnastics in a larger range of
motion, versus just holding astatic stretch where maybe they
arch their back or they or sorry, they round their back or they
slump over, they don't get agood hamstring stretch, they

(38:19):
just get more of a back rounding.
So this is probably a littlebit more specific and also, you
can use your leg muscles to helpyou out rather than just
passively stretching.
Okay, so, just some ideas tostart with.
Okay, so this is that big studyI talked about.
It came out in 2018.
And essentially you can seehere on the side I pulled this
picture from it Is that itlooked at 26 studies.
They looked at staticstretching, active stretching,

(38:40):
passive stretching, ballisticstretching and PNF stretching
right, and what they found isthat, honestly, all of them were
okay, right, ballisticstretching seemed to be not
great out of all of them, butPNF static.
So PNF active and passive wereall really really high and
static seemed to be the mosteffective with that 30 second
bout.
But the key here again,consistency over intensity,
right, all these things kind ofwork.

(39:00):
If they're based on anassessment, right, and they're
based on proper movementpatterns and proper technique,
they're probably all going towork right.
So they found five minutes perweek right.
So that two times 30 secondsper day, five days per week,
right, equals five minutes perweek.
That was the best parameters ofstatic stretching and others to
help increase range of motion,right.
So with assessment first, thenyou've got to be consistent in

(39:21):
what you do.
That's going to be so importantIf you know what muscles groups
are limited from an assessment,medical provider or elsewhere.
You consistently do stretchingand soft tissue work every
single day and then you kind ofdo it in a circuit that's going
to be specific to gymnastics.
That's going to probably leadto your best long-term progress.
And this study just happened tocome out two or three months ago
, so I put it in, reviewed itand kind of picked it apart,

(39:43):
then reviewed it and kind ofpicked it apart and then looked
into some really good stuff wecan take away here.
But again, it's one fifth ofthe puzzle after screening and
then, along with some of theother stuff we'll talk about in
the lecture.
But people always ask me aboutwhat type of stretching, how
long, what should I do?
Why does it work?
Again, we think that we're justrelaxing those muscles and
especially with staticstretching or other stretching,
what we're doing is probablyteaching the athlete and the

(40:05):
perception of their stretch tobe more tolerable.
So we're maybe not increasingthe length of those muscle
fibers themselves, but we'lljust teach those athletes to
tolerate the stretch and relaxinto their stretch, and that's
probably going to be probablyexcuse me the best way to go
about this.
Okay, so, moving on, after we dosome screening and some
stretching work, what's the nextstep in our progress?

(40:25):
Right now, we're going to dosome strength work.
So there's two different areasof strength work that are really
, really important.
So one is going to be buildingoff what we just talked about.
So eccentrics, the, thelengthening contraction.
So picture if you kind of jumpup to a pull-up and slowly lower
down, that's an eccentriccontraction where your body has
to lengthen and contract at thesame time.
Right, sliders on the floorwith your foot on a furniture

(40:48):
slider and sliding out slowlyforward is an eccentric
contraction of your hamstring,right.
So eccentrics are actuallysomething that is shown to
increase muscle length inresearch, right?
So what happens is that youhave that, either that
relaxation from soft tissue care, or maybe you have some of that
learning to tolerate thestretch.
When you stretch every singleday and get a little bit pushed
uh, you know, push yourself alittle bit more each week, right

(41:08):
?
And then eccentrics do actuallymake the muscle fibers longer,
and that's kind of cool to thinkabout is that, uh, there's a
way maybe to actually increasehow much length an athlete has
If you add a little bit of loadin a controlled manner and focus
on that slow lower and all allthose studies that are down
below are done in a lot ofweightlifting and some other
things like that.
But I think there's a reallygood theoretical transfer to

(41:29):
gymnastics in terms of some ofthe things we see every day
again with sliders or with someother contractions that we do in
active flex drills.
So that's going to be one thatwe'll talk about.
And two is that balance is super, super important in your
strength program If you want tokeep your flexibility right.
So doing a lot of strength workto your chest and to your lats
from like rope climbs andpushups like that stuff's okay
and I don't want to give off thenotion that we shouldn't be

(41:50):
doing that, but it has to be inproper balance and in proper
volume compared to how muchupper back strengthening we're
doing, or maybe how much in thelower body we're doing a lot of
hip, flexor and quad and yourthigh work.
How much direct glute trainingare we doing in the back?
How much core training on thesides are we doing?
How much side hip training arewe doing to work on other
muscles that are smaller andmaybe not as frequently trained?

(42:10):
So we have to make sure that wehave both of those things
together.
Is the eccentrics, the balancestrength program, and also not
feeding the fire, which justrefers to slightly reducing the
volume of, maybe, movements orexercises in a program that are
contributing to the flexibilityissue in the first place?
Okay, so for eccentrics, whatwe're going to probably do is
two to three sets of fiverepetitions with a five second

(42:31):
lower, and this can go up to 10repetitions for more necessary
times.
Right, but three things you cando is just split sliders right.
You can do single leg deadliftsfocusing on that slow lower
contraction, and you can also dosplit squats.
You can do things that justfocus on the back leg as well.
Right, for the strength balance, the way that we approach this
and what I program for a lot ofgymnasts who come to Champion is
giving them a home program oftwo to three sets of 10 to 12

(42:53):
repetitions on a bunch ofdifferent exercises for their
hips, their glutes and theirhamstrings.
It's not that they're not doingbox jumps and sprints and sled
pushes and other groin or innerthigh work things for beam, but
uh, what they're trying to do isbalance themselves out right.
And the male athletes that come, it's almost the same thing.
We add a little bit more fortheir shoulders.
Obviously that's their biggerproblem.
But you know, a lot of athletesstruggle with stalders or jams

(43:14):
or pommel flares or dip cuts orthings like that, and we give
them two times a week accessorywork to their hips and to their
core.
That helps fill in some things.
Maybe they're missing becausethey're so strong in their other
muscles of their thigh.
So this applies equally formen's, for women's and for a lot
of other disciplines ingymnastics that have, again, any
type of straddle, any type ofpike.
I know there's a few athletesin trampoline who have to get

(43:37):
into a very deep pike to dothings like that and sometimes
their hamstrings are limited.
Some single leg deadlifts orsome split sliders might be a
fantastic way to enhance theirmobility, to get into a deeper
tuck or to a more efficient flip.
Okay, so balance work here.
So just doing some direct hiptraining, kind of laying on our
back she's driving to theceiling and squeezing her hip at
the top those are really,really good ways to try to focus

(43:58):
on that last little bit of endrange hip motion.
And the next one you'll see isa single, is a double leg
kettlebell deadlift, so justworking on the posterior chain,
driving the hips back right.
And you do have to have alittle bit of a learning curve
here.
It probably took all of ourathletes a good, probably two
months to really understandproper hip hinging mechanics and
how do I keep my core tight toprevent my back from getting

(44:18):
sore and how do I drive myselfdown to the floor right Without
arching too too much.
And this can be taught from agood strength conditioning
professional, from a medicalprovider who understands this,
and probably, honestly, a coupleweeks.
Like you can start low, you canload it up and we'll have a
couple more webinars that arespecific to teaching these
movements.
But this is one of the besthamstring exercises that you can
possibly do and especiallytransfers over very well to the
landing mechanics.

(44:41):
Okay, so it's drinking thehamstrings here.
Here you'll see some side corework which we've shown in some
other lectures up and down,trying to work the side of the
hips.
Okay, clam shells as well.
You know, these are just kindof things we add in a few times
a week because they're typicallyoverlooked.
But those muscles, specificallythe hip rotators, the glutes on
the side right that, thehamstring and the direct glute

(45:04):
training itself, those are themuscles you need to get those
last end ranges of splitflexibility, staller, inbar.
Those muscles rotate your hipand kind of put your hip in the
right position to do fast, rapidmovements that you see in
gymnastics all the time, whetherit's bars or jumps or leaps, or
again, dip cuts for men's orpipe compression, things like
that.
Those muscles have to work justas hard to help balance out the
stiffness of maybe some othermuscles that we've worked on all

(45:25):
the time.
These are some of theeccentrics here.
So you can see she's slowlowering down for a five second
count, right.
And what you can do here isthere's two options.
You'll see she goes back up byaccident, right, but she can
either put her foot on the floorand stand back up or she can
just kind of take her footaround from the block and just
kind of do only the down part,if that makes sense, right.

(45:45):
So if you're on a really lowblock you can just put your
hands down and not use weights.
But probably the best method isgoing to be slowly lowering
down, taking your foot off theblock and then standing up with
two legs, and she doesn't do itin a split squat but she does do
it in a deadlift and you'll seeit there.
So, again, slow lower, tryingto go eccentric contraction for

(46:07):
the back leg and then a slowlower of a hamstring and you see
there she puts her foot downand she stands back up.
Because, again, this is for aflexibility goal, right, we're
trying to just focus on theflexibility of the hamstring or
the flexibility of the quad andthe hip flexor, where she was
really, really hollow, and juststretching out this muscle.
Here In a strength program wemight be doing like full
deadlifts or something like that.
This muscle here In a strengthprogram we might be doing like
full deadlifts or something likethat.
But this is just specificallyworking on flexibility and this

(46:28):
would be in a flexibilitycircuit we'll show.
So these are kind of morecommonly known of sliders right,
like front foot up, slowlyslide up right and you can see
the hands are up on the mat.
For a very important reason.
Number one is safety right.
These things are very demandingand very taxing on hips and it
can be very, very hard to dothem well.
So I tell the girls squareyourself up, be very, very belly

(46:48):
, button forward, tight core,tight glutes, slowly lower down
and use your hands to push backup right.
The second reason is almost inline with that alignment thing
is I only want them to go as lowas they can, with proper
positioning, right.
If they get all the advance offlaring their hip out, turning
their hips, skewing back leg,but that's not going to be
specific to the muscles that wewant to target.
It's going to probably be alittle bit more low back and it
might be starting to stretch outsome of the hip ligaments that

(47:10):
are not designed for that.
At least this is the goal we'retrying to work on.
So trying to do some sliders tothe front and you'll also see
this done to the side.
You'll see these.
They do a couple on each side,usually five, and this is kind
of the outside direction.
So she slowly slides downsideways into a straddle split

(47:33):
and then she uses her hands tohelp pull her back up right,
just focusing on that slow lowercontraction.
Okay, and again these.
Why are we doing these?
These are what's shown inresearch to actually help with
some of the flexibility and thelength of the muscle.
Okay, so don't feed the fire issomething I always talk about
with people, just because it'san error that I made as a

(47:53):
younger coach that was huge,limiting it to like long-term
flexibility gains.
Or if you have somebody who hasreally stiff hip flexors and
really stiff quads, right, maybethe problem is that they're
doing so many leg lifts and somany L-holds and so many L-rope
climbs that it's causing them tonot make progress in their
splits and their flexibilityright.
So it's not that we don't wantto do them, it's that maybe for
that athlete we can modify thatand we can do a different
exercise to complement half oftheir work so they can still get

(48:16):
their core strong and still gettheir arm strong right, but in
a different way.
So one of the reasons we liketo do this, or one of the ways
we like to do this, is justreverse slider crawls right.
You, you can see in thisposition her hips are open or
flat, she's squeezing her glutes, but she's still working on
core and she's still working ongetting her shoulders strong.
This might be a better exercisefor those athletes with really,
really stiff shoulders overjust doing more leg lifts and
more rope climbs.
Maybe you can knock the volumedown of these and supplement as

(48:37):
soon as their shoulders get moremobile.
In a couple of weeks you canadd these back in and focus on a
nice slow lower.
The other way we see this is inrope climbs A lot of kids doing
L-hold rope climbs, doing leglifts they may also have again.
I know you're trying to workcore and legs.
It's really important for bars,but if you get so stiff in your
hip flexors that you can't openyour hips for a full split or
for a sprint, that's going to bea big problem.

(48:58):
So what you might be able to dois still work on your upper
body with horizontal rows, butagain, this is, the hips are
flat, the hips are open, right.
We're not going to contributeto hip flexor or quad stiffness.
This is kind of like thataddition by subtraction concept.
For a few weeks you can stilldo plenty of exercises to get
strong, but you're not going tocontribute to the issue.
And then maybe over three orfour weeks you can add back in

(49:18):
some of these exercises that aremore, you know, kind of the
staple gymnastics exercises weneed.
Okay.
So moving on the third step now.
So, sorry, four steps.
We have screening, we've donesome soft tissue work, we've
done strength work and now we'regoing to finally move on to
control, and this is kind ofactive flexibility.
It's what a lot of peopleunderstand are really really
good and really really importantdrills and you'll see a ton of

(49:42):
drills in here that I like butthings I've gotten from people
that I think are really reallyvaluable.
And the reason we're doing thisis because just doing passive
flexibility on the floor is notgoing to automatically get you a
big split, a big, uh, you know,split, jump on the beam, uh, an
in bar stall or the ability tostep in for a toe shoot or do a
jam or things like that.
So just because you have it onthe floor we talked about it
doesn't automatically meanyou're going to have it on the
actual equipment, right.
So strength by itself is notgoing to help you get there.
You need something to closethat gap between the strength

(50:05):
part of just being on the flooror maybe having individual
muscle strength, that actually agymnastic specific pattern.
The way that I really like todo this is through active
flexibility drills, right, butalso just through basics and
this is something that NickRuddick talks about a lot.
It's just, you know, you cannever go wrong teaching proper
basics right, giving themperfect basics and shapes and
flat lines and dimensions of youknow tapping is going to be

(50:26):
always endlessly good to havereturn on investment, right?
I think that from a gymnasticstechnical point of view, we
understand that.
But from a flexibility point ofview, the best way to start to
incorporate these things toactually show up in gymnastics
is not to start with a reallyfancy drill or really fast
technical drill.
It's to start with.
Can you lay on your back flatand get your arms over your head
?
Can you just swing on a bar andget your you know, your

(50:48):
shoulders to open up properlyright?
Doing a 10 minute basic circuit, maybe a couple of times per
week, especially in line with aflexibility circuit that we'll
talk about, those are probablygoing to be the best ways to
make these things show uplong-term.
Okay so, active flexibilitydrills we'll see a couple of
here.
So this is more for straddling.
But this is called a reptileslide.
So she's just kind of on herside, her hands are under her
head to make sure she's nice andflat right.

(51:10):
She's pulling her knee up toher elbow right Up and down, and
you'll see some progressions ofthis.
So next is a standing version,so up and over a beam and I like
doing these on crank beamsbecause of how you can adjust
the height based on the athleteyou.
You can also do these sideways.
So the hands are on the headhere just to allow cheating.

(51:30):
I don't want her to swing herhips or push down on the beam
with her hand to hike her leg uphigher.
I really just want to see heronly use her hip muscle and try
to keep good proper coreengagement and alignment here Up
and over the wall.
And the next progression you'llsee are kind of some of my
favorite for a group Doing thesepyramid walks.
I think a lot of people haveseen this drill uh, popularized
on either my youtube channel orsome other things, and lectures
are kind of spreading aroundsocial media, which is awesome.

(51:52):
But if you don't understand whywe're doing it and how we got
here with the four other steps,it's probably not going to be
very helpful.
So what you do is you put threeblocks in line with a nice
ascending height and you slowlywalk your way down until you get
to the very end where you'rehigh.
And the reason I like thisdrill so much is one it's easy
to set up.
You just put three differentheight mats right.
It's easy to scale to theathletes right.
Heather in this picture is notthe tallest athlete, so she has

(52:14):
a lot more work on these topones here, but if you have an
athlete who's really really tall, you can put another block at
the end.
That's higher If you have somereally really down and get
harder and harder and harder,versus having to set up you know
45 different drills fordifferent athletes.

(52:35):
So they do this sideways andthey also do this forwards.
Again, her hands are behind herto kind of help her not lean
too much, okay, so this is thenext progression I really really
like of head flexibility drills.
So in this position she'scurled up in a ball like this,

(52:56):
right, and the reason we do thisis because when you're curled
up in a ball like this and yourback is rounded, you can't arch
right, and I see a lot of girlswho do hands and knees kind of
kicking, and I used to have alot of girls do that and really
all it did was it just madetheir back sore, right, they
kinked a lot from their lowerback and they were arching up
top here in their spine and theyweren't actually using their
hip muscles, right.
So by curling somebody up likethis, well, this kind of looks
like the last end range of asplit leap, which is where a lot

(53:17):
of people have problems withperformance, but also with back
pain and hip pain, right.
So, teaching someone to curl upin a ball like this and use
their hip muscles to lift theirleg up as high as they can,
that's going to probably be morespecific to gymnastics, so it
doesn't look nearly asimpressive, but it's extremely
hard, and you can do these tothe side as well.
If someone's struggling withthis and Taylor has long legs,
she's showing this to be way tooeasy, or it's much, much harder

(53:39):
than it looks.
You can bend the leg to startto make this a shorter length of
a lever arm, they call it.
Or you could put a band holdingfrom here and going around and
kind of assisting their leg upwhen they go backwards.
The band would come down tohere and help pull them up.
There's a lot of differentvariations.
You can scale to this to makeit more appropriate to the
younger athlete, to someonewho's struggling, and you'll see
all the progressions here.
Next right.

(53:59):
So doing some leg drivers, justtrying to get our active flex to
kind of transfer over more of akicking pattern for again
hamstring leg lowers or like theopposite of that, sideways
kicks, and again these are verychallenging.
It's just so.
You have a lot of scalableathletes, from the younger
athletes all the way up to thehigher level athletes.
Needle walk-ins are also very,very good.
They just slowly keep goingmore and more and they hold the

(54:20):
last end range.
One Stall bars if you havestall bars, are a really good
way to progress.
These Okay, and you'll see thata lot of these just progress
naturally based on the athlete'sability.
So if you have older athletesyou might get to some of these.
If you have younger athletes,you're probably just going to be
doing some of the more simpledrills that they can do well and
not kind of cheat with.
But all these active flexdrills are going to be again the

(54:43):
fourth part of that circuitthat we're going to talk about
at the end, trying to transferover the screening.
We know what's going on.
We did some soft tissue care.
We did some specific stretching.
We've done some eccentrics,we're filling in that strength
balance.
This is how we can kind ofcompliment moving down the
pathway of actually making ashow up in skills.
Okay, and I'm going todefinitely I tried to make it
green so I could highlight thatthese are not my drills,

(55:12):
no-transcript.
So here you'll see again thosefive dimensions of a flat line
that Nick has people do, whichis laying flat on your back,
laying flat on your stomach,standing with your arms over
your head, doing a handstand andthen hang from a bar.
Can you do those five positionswith flat, open hips, right
Open shoulders, obviously, butalso can you use your new hip
flexibility just to be flat in aline.

(55:33):
And you'll see that there'ssometimes when she struggles a
little bit and her knees pop upbecause she's still working on
this, but can you just getoverhead right.
We do a lot of basics withuppers and lowers to try to
build in the shoulderflexibility but also the lower
body kind of lower ab strengthto help our hips work a little
harder.
So they do 10 uppers, 10 lowers, 10 togethers and they do the
same thing on their stomach A 10second hold.

(55:54):
Sorry as well, I think I gotthis off flow gymnastics
somewhere.
But then upper body as well,okay, trying to work in just the
upper components.
She should have her head alittle bit more tucked in, but
that's okay.
Again, arching, trying to workon the hip flexor opening up,
trying to work on it forgymnastic-specific tapping maybe
.
Okay, doing a little bittogether.

(56:15):
This is a hard one for her.
Okay, doing some rolling drills.
Can you keep your hips flat?
Can you engage your core andengage your glutes in just a
flat shape where you learn howto control different positions
of gravity pushing down on youGood, positions of gravity
pushing down on you.
I do a lot of wall shaping.
I think that wall shaping is areally low risk, kind of easy
way to kind of learn the scoopedposition that's so important in

(56:37):
many drills.
So what you'll see happen isthey're going to do 10 seconds
in this position.
They'll flip over and do 10seconds with their hands in a
back hamstring position.
Then they'll flip over to theirhands.
They'll do 10 seconds withtheir feet on the wall.
10 seconds with their hands onthe wall, sorry, with their feet
on the wall and their stomachup in an arch position.
And again, it just kind ofincorporates global arching and
global hollowing as a specificshape first, and then it moves

(56:58):
on to actual shape changing andtapping, again, just trying to
find ways that are, you knowknow, not specific high level
hip drills like kicking or dipcuts and things like that.
They're specific to just shapechanging.
So hollow art, shape changing,hanging from a bar, you can do
it on the ground, on our backand on our stomach, and then,

(57:20):
lastly, we can do it in ahandstand with a spot trying to
work on turning over for cappingor for back handsprings and
vaulting and things like that.
Again, for a lot, a lot of guystoo that maybe work in moyes or
tapels and stuff like that, Ikind of think that those are all
probably really applicable fortheir hip and shoulder mobility
before you move on to high-leveldrills, all right.
So lastly, moving on here we'realmost finished is if you get

(57:41):
all the best flexibility drills,the best active flex drills,
the medical providers screenthem and you do everything right
, but then you finally get tothe end of it and you don't
actually work on technique andgymnastics specific skills.
Unfortunately, that's going tofall apart.
It's not going to last too longand it's not going to really
show up in the things that youwant, you're going to feel
really frustrated.
The athlete's going to becurious about why it's not
actually working out, and thebiggest reason is because it's

(58:02):
not specific.
If you had to, you know, learnhow to throw a baseball.
It doesn't really work to getyour arm nice and loose until
you actually learn how to throw.
Same thing goes for gymnastics,right, if you did all the best
flexi good in the world, but youdon't actually learn where your
, where your hips, have to go ina split jump, or learn how to
how to get your dip cut drive,or how to get a good stall,
their snap at the bottom, how toscoop and drop to the bottom

(58:24):
and bounce the bar like it's notgoing to go.
Well, skill you're trying toimprove, whether that's, you
know, jumps, leaps again, dipcuts, pommels, whatever.
It is Right.
And that would be probably aweekend lecture, which is what a
lot of people already have, butit would be an entire lecture
in itself to go through thespecific drills that are good
for, you know, hip or shoulderflexibility, right, this clear
hip drill is specific to a toeshoot.

(58:44):
You're specific to arm openingand flat hips opening up out of
a out of a toe shoot, right.
So that might be good for her,but it might not work for
another athlete who has a hugeproblem with leaps or with jumps
or with with in bars that aredifferent types, like stall
there.
So you have to make sure thatwhatever you're working on,
maybe in your circuit, you say,okay, that last step is, I want
you to do one drill that'sspecific to the skill that
you're struggling with, and andyou can add that all together

(59:06):
and that will be kind of thebest way to make it tailored to
the athlete.
So what are we really doing inreal life?
I know I've kept alluding tothis circuit at the end, but,
like, what do we actually dowhen we have 20 minutes at the
gym and we have 10 athletes infront of us and we're going to
go okay, guys, we're going tochange our flexibility programs
a little bit, we're going to tryhelpful, right?
So what you need to do first isyou need to take a big step
back and look at the wholelecture and say, okay, what two

(59:28):
drills really work for me, right?
I don't have sliders.
I don't have, you know, beamspace, because there's a
recreational class there.
I don't have the coaching staffto watch.
You know, 20 kids at the sametime.
It's just me with my 10athletes.
So pick two things that workwith right.
Pick two or three things ineach of these categories.

(59:48):
So the screening everybody canprobably do if they just have a
line right or somewhere to lookat.
You don't need the wall spaceif it's not essential.
Right, maybe you have somelacrosse balls that the athlete
can bring in.
Maybe you have some foamrollers.
Maybe you have a stick, somesort of soft tissue specific
stretching, like okay, a lot ofmy kids have inner thigh
flexibility issues.
Their straddles aren't great.
Let's do a specific soft tissueto that.
And then let's work on theinner thigh a little bit with

(01:00:09):
that targeted stretching.
Let's maybe do a few of thosedirect hip training or clamshell
exercises or weighted hip lifts.
Let's do maybe a few of thosebeam drills that I like because
I have a low beam available.
Or maybe I can stack up thepyramids and let's do a few
shape changing drills and a fewjumping and leaping drills on
tumble track or rod strip after.
So what I would do is I wouldscreen, do the split, see how it

(01:00:29):
feels on the line, do maybe 30to 60 seconds of soft tissue and
then 30 to 60 seconds of aspecific two or three stretches.
Then I would do specificstrength work for the opposite
side, so the clamshells, theside planks, whatever it is.
We do a few active flex drills,we do a technical circuit and
then we'd start back over, right?
So if you it takes time tolearn and teach these athletes
the concepts, don't get me wrong.
I'm not going to say that thisis going to happen fast.

(01:00:50):
But if you take maybe a halfhour and say, hey, we're going
to learn some new stuff.
I watched a webinar that wasreally cool and they had some
good ideas.
We're going to teach you how todo these things well, we're
going to monitor you and watchyou do it, not just go you know,
kind of like let you go on yourown and see how it works, but
we're going to sit here andwe're going to walk you through
it, but your job is to beresponsible for doing it
correctly.
And then what happens is, oncethey learn the exercises and

(01:01:11):
learn the circuits maybe havethree or four circuits that you
like to for the upper body, twofor the lower body the athletes
can knock this out in like fiveor 10 minutes, right?
So what we'll do is we'll have,uh, two times a week we'll do
15 minutes of a circuit for theupper body, 15 minutes of a
circuit for the lower body, andwe'll do that maybe once or
twice per week and that's howwe've seen athletes make the

(01:01:32):
most progress without, you know,getting really cranky hips or
cranky shoulders.
Uh, because we're consistentlydoing those flexibility circuits
twice a week, along with ournormal daily stretching in the
morning, sorry, in the beginningof practice, and then also, you
know, maybe some soft tissuework early before practice.
That's been what I've found tobe the most significant progress
, because it really hits stiffshoulders, it really hits stiff
hips.
So kind of take that I callthese performance complexes

(01:01:54):
taking the best of what theresearch offers, medical
providers offer, coaches offer,and also some of the more
classic gymnastics-basedstretching and stuff like that.
Combine that in a circuit anduse everything available to you.
And so here's an example ofthis.
This is five ago, pre buzzedhead, with Dave.
So you'll see a nice lusciouslock of hair which he's doing

(01:02:17):
some inner thigh stretching,such from an entire foam rolling
, and she does some quad foamrolling.
She's an inner thigh.
Again, she was a little crossbond her hip a little bit before
.
So both of these done for about20 to 30 seconds and she has
her hamstrings as well.
Cassie was just reallystruggling with her splits you
could see in that first pictureJust because she had really

(01:02:39):
really long legs and she wasgrowing really fast and she went
on to become a very successfultrack athlete, which is
phenomenal.
But just after the soft tissuework and stretching we're
starting to get a little lower.
The only reason I held her legon the leg lower is because the
camera was facing sideways and Iwanted people to be able to see
it.
So normally she would just layon the edge of the block by
herself and do it.
But she has 10 leg lowers oneach side and then you'll see

(01:03:01):
her come back and she's actuallystarting to get a little more
progress Now.
Again, the muscular soft tissueis getting better.
Okay, we're doing some legdrivers here, trying to transfer
.
Again, her biggest issues wereinner thigh and were hamstring,
so we're trying to get it totransfer over to split leaps and
to jumps and to sprinting,which she was really, really
struggling with.
Doing just some basic kicks,some needle kicks will be the

(01:03:21):
opposite of that.
You can see, I went from leglowers to the leg drivers, to
the needle kicks, because thoseare all really hamstring
specific and now we're startingto see a lot of progress.
Right, she's about four incheslower than she was at the start
and you know there's no way thatthat's going to show up, you
know, permanently.
That was three hours later, butI'm not going to tell you that.
That was like the golden fix.
It worked one day and you knowI have all the secrets actually

(01:03:47):
show up long term.
So, again, this is just likethe start of it, but consistency
and making sure it's based onassessment is going to be kind
of your best point here.
Okay, so what do we do with theathletes who just really really
struggle right, just really havestiff hips, who just,
unfortunately, despite all theirstretching, despite all the
screening, just cannot seem toget a better split and whether
that's they don't have enoughtime in the gym or whether it's

(01:04:07):
just again, they just justdoesn't really work for them.
They're naturally mobile.
Again, my, I'm a whopping five,six.
I'm probably not going to playin the NBA anytime soon.
It's my height justdisadvantaged me genetically,
right.
There's definitely athletes who,unfortunately, I just don't
have the greatest hip mobility,right, but they love gymnastics,
they want to do it and it'stheir thing, and they're a good
kid and they work super hard.
They should be in the gym justas much as anybody else, right?

(01:04:29):
So what do you do with theseathletes?
Right?
Number one be a good person.
Right?
Just kind of take a step backand be like okay, I understand
that this is maybe not theeasiest thing for you, but we're
going to work on it.
Right, we have some tools andjust keep're being a good person
here, and if you do that,you're on board, you can stay
and you can hang out, no matterwhat.
Right, but you have to have areally good, honest conversation

(01:04:51):
with people and saying, hey, uh, listen, gymnastics is really
hard.
It has a lot of things that youhave to do really, really well
at.
Uh, this might just be yourthing, you know, maybe you're
just a naturally more powerfulathlete and you have a lot more,
you know leg, but that comes at, maybe, the sacrifice of being
really, really mobile, and Ithink that you saw in the video
Taylor, who's that blonde?
She's one of the most mobileathletes I've ever seen in my

(01:05:12):
life right.
However, she couldn't pull upher way or do a push-up to save
her life when she first came tothe gym.
So she had to work five timesas hard as anybody else on all
of the strengths.
So every time we did legstrength or we did active
flexibility drills, it was superhard for her because of how
mobile she was and how long herlegs were.
The opposite side of that isathletes who are really really
stiff.
They maybe do really reallywell in strength.

(01:05:33):
It's not that hard for them.
They have really good power andwhatever, but it's just that
their flexibility is not thatgreat.
Everybody has something theyhave to really really focus on.
Trying to involve a medicalprovider is probably the best
thing you can ever do, becausethose medical providers have,
again, in-depth knowledge of thehip and they're going to really
narrow in on it instead ofbeing like, okay, just try these
five things in a circuit.
They can say, no, it's thesetwo things that are really,

(01:05:53):
really important.
This area here, this area here.
Let's focus on just those andmake a customized circuit and
that might be better long-termfor you, always trying to modify
their skill profile right.
So we've had a couple ofathletes who have we've had an
issue with their hip flexibilityand every time we try to work

(01:06:15):
these advanced leaps or we tryto work new skills that are very
hip intensive, they just get acranky you know hip joint and
they get a cranky little back.
It's like, okay, well, let'sstart looking at the code and
seeing what other skills you canwork on in optionals.
I know that's not the realitywith all compulsories, but you
can definitely try to modifysome of their jumps.
Think about if you take awaymaybe one switch leap on the
floor and you add a differentjump to get the fulfillment of

(01:06:37):
their element.
Or maybe you work on a toeshoot or a free hip instead of a
staller because they're notthat mobile in the pancake
position, you might have savedthem thousands and thousands of
repetitions of skills that aregoing to be really, really
painful on their hip joints.
So trying to take a step backand make okay, how else can we
work on this?
And I think that in theshoulder lecture we talked about
you know back handspring skillsversus, you know soup skills or

(01:06:58):
things like that, and on beamand on floor or maybe on men's
parallel bar, you know doingsome other skills that can get
PCD value without making itreally aggressive on their hips
might be the best choice forthem.
That's just the reality ofworking in such a hard sport
like gymnastics, and these areexamples of those specific
medical things that I made.
So obviously I'm lucky to be amedical provider, so I screen
the athletes and do medicalassessments.
But coaches can screen andcoaches can do all that stuff

(01:07:19):
just fine.
They can figure out what'sgoing on.
But you can also work with amedical provider and get a
specific program that they do,and so I made these all for the
athletes.
There was this is an athlete onthis side who was having a lot
of trouble with her hipflexibility and maybe some
shoulder stuff, and this athletewas having a lot of problem
with calf flexibility as well.
So we screened them out andsaid, okay, these this list.
When you come to practice, ifyou can get here 10 minutes

(01:07:39):
early, run this list one time,right, and if not, when we do
flexibility circuits, this isyour list.
You're going to do this listbecause this is super specific
to what you need help with,right, and I've even had
athletes who they can't get hereafter school on time.
They they just one isn't enoughduring the week and say, all
right, well, you know, maybe youcan knock this out on Saturday
in the morning, just real quickIf you have time to take 10
minutes and I know that's hardand it's unrealistic, but

(01:08:01):
athletes who really struggled,they just need to spend a little
extra time on it.
And again, open communicationand a good discussion about why
it's so important for yourhealth and keep you safe and
keep you progressing in skills.
Sometimes athletes buy in,they're willing to do it, hey.
So here's just two slides of aton of research articles that
really opened my eyes to why Ichanged stretching.
I know a lot of stuff we'vetalked about here is really not

(01:08:21):
what traditional gymnasticstalks about.
And again, I was in that sameboat of just doing passive
stretching and over splits.
And we know we still do somestatic stretching after, you
know, in our warmup and we stilldo stuff.
It's not that we don't do that,but we've just changed,
completely overhauled the way weapproach flexibility training
based on what articles andresearch were coming out.
So these six articles wereextremely valuable to me to kind
of open my eyes, to pick.

(01:08:42):
Okay, maybe there's somethingelse I need to think about.
And so if you're someone who'son the nerdier side or you're
trying to find, you know, almostlike a defense argument for why
people are like, no, we can'tchange you know, we can't do
anything differently, I wouldpoint them in the direction of
these articles and be like, okay, well, take a peek at some of
these and you know, reallyunderstand the material and
think about what they're sayinghappens in these big, big
research studies, and thesescientific facts are are very,

(01:09:03):
very high level across many,many studies.
It's not just, like you know, arandomized.
You know we picked five peopleoff the street and tested their
flexibility and tried to see ifthey got better.
These are legit.
These are really really good,well-done studies.
So these are six really goodones.
And then these are also reallygood ones as well, more so about
you know why foam rolling worksand what happens, like the 26

(01:09:26):
reviews and systematic reviewabout how much stretching works.
So that's a really good one todo.
If you're someone asking youknow, why don't we hold for two
minutes anymore?
Or like, what are we doing?
Just because, again, thepressure on the ligaments might
be a little bit higher after 60seconds.
So just really good tools foryou guys to use and have.
Okay, these are the morespecific references if you want
to look them up online.
So we have quite a bit in herethat you can do.
I'll put these in the notessection as well, and thank you

(01:09:49):
guys so much.
I mean, if you're here andyou're listening and you want to
get new ideas, I mean that'sjust unbelievably valuable to
the athletes that you work with.
So if you have questions, whichI'm sure many people will,
that's totally fine.
I'd love to have a discussionabout this on the Facebook
channel, so head on over thereand post your questions if
you're confused about it.

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Maximize Split Flexibility For Better Routines: Drills, Stretching, & Science Summary

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