The Evolution Of Our Stretching | From Optimal Performance To Injury Avoidance - Mere Mortals Conversations

Episode Transcript
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(00:07):
Welcome back. Mere Mortalites to once again, an addition of Musings here. You've got Juan on this side. Kyrin here on this side. And we are on the 12th of June. Oh, June, Jesus almighty. January, I wanna be very quick.
I don't even know how that popped up and it is 2025, 12th January, 2025. And we are live at 9 in the morning. We try to keep it pretty consistent to this time. It might again, we've talked about it previously, fluctuate a little bit as the year goes by. But in generality, Sunday mornings, you're gonna find us talking live and that's on both the podcasting, the good podcasting platforms out there, also on the YouTube and who knows what might come up, in the future as well. So

(00:47):
today's topic,
flexibility.
I thought about this, the And stretching. And stretching. Now you asked me about this in particular,
as a quick query of hey what should we talk about the first thing that came to mind was I guess stretching flexibility
it came to mind because we do it so differently to each other I guess I would say there's reasons behind I guess you're stretching

(01:10):
fine. I mean in comparison is
a subset of ours in comparison to how many you do but and you also look this up because I thought
I feel like we've talked about this before and so we have so if you are interested in this I don't know if you can find the video of it because maybe we've hidden it or it's maybe this searchable. It'll be
you'll have to go to the mere mortals book reviews YouTube channel,

(01:32):
old episode playlist.
And then episode 49. Episode 49. But it's much easier to find on the audio
platform because it is searchable much easier. But we did a conversation back in 2020 about flexibility and mobility. Yeah, mid 2020. So it's been 4 and a half years, which is even crazier. Correct. Episode
49 and
sorry,

(01:52):
deviating a little bit about the conversation stretching. We'll get into stretching.
I relistened to that episode. I listened to it on 2x and a couple of things called out to me. Oh, shit. Me too. One, the
the quality wasn't bad. Oh, no. It's not good.
How it went, man, that was pretty good quality. That was 4 and a half years. You're still bumping things, but you know, I've I've just bumped them my my device now. So It it was like that, I was like, wow. The quality that we were putting out there was good too.

(02:19):
We were doing this thing which was like a mere mortal moment Yeah. At the very beginning. I've forgotten we've done that. So we used to do this thing with the mere mortal moment. Very beginning, we talk about something that happened in the week. Yeah. It'd be like a little quotable thing. I think it got I think it because we went to twice a week, it got to the point where we're like, I'm not having anything to talk about. To talk about. Well, we're really stretching for something. For something to bring up and lose that as well. But the third one was

(02:43):
we're gonna probably talk about it more in a personal nature. I reckon stretching today.
When I reflected on that episode, I went and that episode had quite a lot of detail to it and we like we separately
talked about static stretching, dynamic stretching, difference between flexibility,
mobility,
definitions.
Could tell our style was very different then. We had a lot more

(03:05):
research
for 1. Yep. As in
we were
we're still using personal anecdotes, but it was it was more centered around all this is what we researched this week. Correct
but there was a really no this will come up a little bit later there was a really interesting thing that we talked about in there which was
stretching around longevity

(03:27):
and it's like it's wild to look over look back and listen to it it was 4 and a half years ago
and I started
looking at it in the way of oh
damn like that's now okay what I'm talking about what I was talking about then you know I wasn't a dad I wasn't even in the horizon. Yeah. The the thinking more around them was I'm stretching more for When we were 28 then? Yeah. Maybe even like 27.

(03:52):
Pristine mobility
and maybe around my training,
and that's completely
changed. Yeah. Kind of like how I talked about it then. I probably didn't anticipate it to be that soon. I guess thereafter. So, look my recommendation is
check out episode 49 because go find it. Go see the level of quality. We're putting out 4 and a half years ago.

(04:13):
It
pushes, I guess, I would say there's
certain levels that we've improved today.
It's not by magnitude. It's percentages, like, it's percentages that we've improved. So, I was like, that's cool. It's cool to see that we were maintaining some level of quality all the way back then. Maybe, you know, we've always thought about this. We're building a collection of,

(04:33):
content that people can refer to. I feel like you could go and re listen to that one and it'd be
just as yeah I feel like if you remove the episode 49 out of it and it was just a piece of flexibility and mobility
I reckon people would still like tune into that I could see that happening so anyways that was my spiel I wanted to set at the beginning right the one thing
so I took my notes for this episode before I listened to that as well. And I was looking at and going, you know what? There isn't that much overlap between these notes and the last one. And there was a couple of things that I said in there, which I'm also pretty happy with in terms of like, prediction wise

(05:09):
of where you'd be now? No, not where I'd be now. But a
you asked me how long would it take to get the splits? Correct. And
I said,
for me, obviously,
I didn't do it. Well, it took ages.
And
I said, if you were really dedicated, probably a year. And
I think that still holds true ish.

(05:31):
Because there was a guy at the gym,
whose New Year's resolution was to do this. I was chatting with 1 of the one of the PTs there or,
ship PT or just,
one of the coaches or the people who leads the classes. Okay.
And
she's really encouraging and she was like, Yeah, I reckon I could get him

(05:52):
to do the front split in a year. Front splits in a year. I was like, okay, all right. Yeah, I think it's doable. Just
with a lot more. Yeah. Yeah. It's the effort part, which I now question how many people have it in them to put in. To actually do it in a much effort. Doable in a year, but what does that mean? Okay. So let's let's I let's talk about that that as a point. Yeah. Again, reflect back. We'll

(06:15):
talk about some things obviously that were around 5 years ago, but I guess my question now is how much has stretching changed for you
5 years, 10 years ago? Because you've been doing it now for a while.
What's now, if you're looking at it right now till in the next 5 years, is there anything that you you're changing in terms of what you're doing in the daily practice?
Moving forward, that has been

(06:38):
different to the past? Or is it literally still the same? It's pretty similar. It's pretty similar. I've gone through phases of
I'll
ratchet
up or go harder.
I'll turn it into a full on session. So I've got a session now at the gym which
has
replaced what would have been a calisthenic session, I guess. And I or you know, a leg calisthenic session, for example,

(07:02):
where I would just do front split, middle split pancake training for
3 hours straight, basically.
And
so that's, that's more training wise. That's, that's actual,
you know, I'm using weights, for example, putting them on my knees and a tailor's pose to butterfly pose. You have to like psych yourself up for these workouts. Yes. And this is the thing that

(07:25):
I went in there the other day and I realized, oh, man, I'm not looking forward to this.
This is really painful. I don't want to be here. I don't want to do this. And
why, you know, why am I doing this? This is why I also question like, have people got the motivation to do this? Because
if your motivation is just I just want to flex and be able to do the splits,

(07:45):
I don't think that's enough to
you can get you can get better for sure. But to get full splits, and even I now say I'm not perfect, I'm still a slight bit off
both middle splits and front splits.
I don't think I've got it in me to
push to that final level of getting completely flat because

(08:07):
how much?
Close enough, it hurts so much already.
The amount of hours I need to spend on it. And it's
it helps the handstands Yes. But it's I'm at the point where it's
diminishing returns oh yeah I'm I'm well past diminishing returns
I'm into like the minuscule
slurping up the last piece of rice in the bowl returns trying to chopstick yeah yeah yeah so okay so like that's another foundational suite for I guess, Kyren, very much.

(08:37):
It hasn't changed yet. So what I do much. Yeah. So what I do in the mornings, I'll usually still do like an hour of just general mobility warm up, but I'm not
pressing as hard as I can to get
additional, this is more just maintenance and
limb bring the body up for the day.
And it's more just to kind of prep me. And that's very static stretching.

(08:59):
When I go to the gym,
20 minutes, 30 minutes of dynamic stuff or and especially risk flexibility and things.
And then
it's just normal training. And that's it. I don't even do any post stretching.
I've never gotten into I don't I don't know. I've never never found that beneficial. No. Yeah. So

(09:19):
most people will know this. I guess times workouts
are optimized for the handset work. Yes, you are doing other
weightlifting stuff thrown in right right at the end just just for
because it's actually helping me yeah with the handstands now yes but but the stretching for you isn't to optimize
that like sort of lifting I guess it's not, you know, doing lifting or stretching where see where I stand now is my stretching is not in the morning like not when I wake up but I'm training in the morning. So

(09:49):
when I get to the gym, I've been doing a,
using AI
asking it like, you know, what's the best things to do x y z because there was a couple of what was I trying to get? I was I was like, I wanna in the shortest amount of time possible Did the max deadlift as early as possible in the morning? No. It was like in the shortest amount of time possible. I wanna be like mobile and stretched out and I wanna hit things like the wrists, the rotator cuffs, hips,

(10:17):
knees,
all of these various things, but I wanna
compact it as much as possible so you know it might sound crazy 5 minutes I just want to spend 5 minutes even with my warm up stretching flexibility mobility and we're going to intermingle those words quite a lot here,
all in the one go so I get some at the beginning of a workout I've been throwing in like hanging off of a bar as well just to stretch out, but for me it's not for the function of becoming

(10:44):
stretchier or mobile in that sense, not front splitting, not side splitting, not the handset, it's
predominantly,
so I feel more limber all the movements that are coming up ahead. Sure. Easily like now, so when I compare it to the previous episode, we talked about it now
as opposed to when I was 28 and I go in for a leg day, squat day, right? I can very, very easily tell that part of it is also because it's always early in the morning, but that very first squat or second squad

(11:14):
feels
heavy, feels hard.
When I do my stretching
protocol and movement just beforehand for whatever 5 minutes,
let's just say it improves
my ability to get warm and into the movement by 20 30%. So it's not like amazing and that's why I'm not spending a ton of time on it.

(11:34):
So then to give you an idea, my
stretching, if you will, or getting myself into the movement, I do more when doing the movement and so specifically for a squat day or a leg day, I'll do some stretching and mobility to, okay, get it like at least moving, so I'm not creaky
and then working my way up on squats
and for me, a 140 kilo squat at the beginning

(11:57):
will feel so much heavier than when I start getting up to 190, 200 more because
there's more time to be warmed up. And then when I go back down, it just feels ridiculously easy. But my stretching isn't
about the stretch itself or becoming more flexible in that nature. It's become more
a get me quicker into
the mode of lifting heavier and the movements that I want to do. So that's one aspect of it. And I think the other one was also the just stretching

(12:24):
or the
the good feeling of the muscle fiber stretching. And so again,
way back when I would do this way heavier and,
way more
targeted directed action around, or I've just done a set of chest flies, something like that. Cool. Then I'll hold a stretch position on my chest pecs to try and do like any extra little bit of muscle fiber tearing for that extra muscle volume.

(12:50):
Whereas now, it's nothing like that, it'll just be maybe the tail end of a session or a particular movement.
I might hold the stretch in a particular position
more as a recovery aspect to just let it unwound and not feel super tight as opposed to Oh, yeah, I'm trying to maximize
X amount of muscle tearing or something like that. Yeah. So a couple of questions.

(13:12):
Taking away any
logistics stuff, taking away any feeling of energy,
what would be the optimal time for you to go to a workout and that 140
kilograms feels
the best like, so so right at the start of the morning, I can't imagine it's
it's the best sort of feeling. If you were to start a workout at 9 am

(13:34):
midday,
3 pm 8 pm does and would it would there be any time where you're like, oh, okay, this feels the best. Yeah, just getting into it. Yeah. I said the boys warmed up in the time
the best time,
honestly,
has been something like 4 pm. Okay. Pm. And I think that's, it's, there's some things around

(13:54):
that, which is like, yeah, right in the morning.
You know warmed up you haven't had enough time through the whatever x amount of time prior to load up with food and beer at the readiness
and I've trained in all those different like time domains early morning 11
mid afternoon, evening that sort of thing and I found

(14:15):
the easiest in the past even with stretching
has been around that time of like mid afternoon. That's perfect. Yep, absolutely right now
There's no way in all of heaven and earth I'd be able to do that training at that time. However,
optimal optimal, that would have to be it for me. Yep. Yep. Also,
when you're coming into the mornings now, are you

(14:38):
going through a set routine of these are the stretches I do to hit every body part? And does that deviate at all, depending on how you're feeling? Or you just not doesn't deviate at all, which has been nice. That's been really nice. I think that's one aspect of stretching that I found
really, really helpful,
personally is that
especially with stretching because if you were to call out, again, squatting, which for me,

(15:00):
I love like I love squatting and
I could tell you I don't even have to work through a process, I kind of like know what my process is because I enjoy doing it and it's
some mixture of, I'm good mornings, some lightweight squatting, going up and away, the certain reps that I like scheme I love. Don't even have to note that down. With stretching,
It is very, very easy at least for me personally to go into a

(15:22):
stretch
session, very short for me, but to be like, fuck it. I'm just going to go straight into a squat. Like I'm going to, I'll just like hang from the bar and cannot be thinking about it. So I have to be
really targeted and really conscious of, okay, it's and specifically right now,
it goes, you do like the cat cow kind of stretch. That's the kind of beginning and stretch out one of my hands up sort of I'm still like leaning down

(15:47):
past one of my hands on the knee, do the other stretch around,
do one of the world's greatest stretch. So, you know, put your knee forward kind of a 90 degree angle, the other leg goes backwards kind of behind your body,
you're rotating,
facing down, rotating up.
Then there's, if you can see the video, Karan sitting down with his knee kind of placed over the knee, over his
leg placed over the knee. So doing that, laying my back, stretching out the hips. Take a 4. Take a 4 there again, Actually lame for it. So stretching out the hips in that way. Or reverse pitching. Reverse pitching Jesus.

(16:18):
And then there's hanging off a bar, so just letting everything sort of loose and usually in there some sort of like holding a squat,
low squat position just for a minute or 2 sort of thing. If you're on my phone or something like that. That's been generally the
go to every single morning and that's been again you hear that and it's you know could I be optimizing it more perfectly in some other ways?

(16:41):
Probably but I found that's now been
the right mixture of I can do it consistently
and I won't deviate away from it and for a long time I won't do it about 5 minutes. Okay yeah So he's gone through that pretty rapidly.
Like, I'm gonna say the hold
30 seconds, 40 seconds.
Yeah, the

(17:03):
but that's very similar to what I do. The only additional things I do is
the classic
gym thing with a stick getting
it or holding it above your head and going at your mind.
Or maybe I'm doing some like windmill type actions with those.
A couple of stuff on the wall, like just using the wall to be able to

(17:24):
put your put your arm on the wall, your forearm on the wall and then kind of twist into it
and get that chest muscle,
some stuff with the fingers, but that's more particularly just for wrists.
And but everything else you said, those pretty similar to what I do.
I do a little extra stuff on my back as well. Just the knees doing circles and stuff. Okay. I was gonna say actually something interesting that I've been using and I probably I'll probably say that I've used that

(17:54):
this use handstands in this way like I've applied them in this way.
I use handstand on the wall as a form of stretching after I finish a workout.
So, what I'll do is usually, it's after a chest day or after I've done
arms, I will
go to wall and I'll do handstands,
but I'll do the handstands where
I place my hands quite far away from the wall and I'm bending my legs over quite a bit and it just it's a good feeling stretch, like I like feeling the stretch when my back is kind of bending. I'll

(18:25):
go to a little bit more pressure on one side of the arm, go to a pressure over the other side of the arm, and I don't know what it is. I think it's the,
I feel the pressure on my forearms, it feels nice to kind of bend back the wrists, it helped me sort of bend my spine in nice ways in that upside down mode.
I've been using it a lot more as stretching as opposed to just doing handstand for handstands sake. Let's just say that so that's a I don't know if anyone else does that at all but to me like it's it's a weirdly enjoyable feeling to do that,

(18:57):
and then I pretend that I'm doing handstand work but in reality, it's just stretching.
So because we're in this section now, I'll give a couple of extra
details that we missed on the last one. So
in particular,
there's there's 2 types of
stretching
mechanicalisms
techniques,

(19:18):
if you want, which
get talked about a lot, which I have found
not useful and useful. So
one is PNF.
If you've heard of that before, let me see if I wrote it down.
Proprioceptive
neuromuscular
facilitation.
You heard that one before? I've heard p and f and I was like, I can't cannot tell you for a lot of me what it actually so basically, the

(19:41):
the theory behind that or the way it works is you'll
get into a stretch
for 5. So let's say you're trying to do
middle splits or pancakes, something like that. You'll get into the stretch position, whatever, just like the lightest stretch or
yeah, just just a easy light position for yourself start spreading out. And then you'll contract do that for

(20:03):
5, 10 seconds, something like that. I've been trying trialing this recently with 5 seconds, they go out for 5 seconds, and then you contract your muscles as hard as you can for 5 seconds,
then let it out again for 5 contract as hard as you can. So it's kind of like the point is to release sort of like in yoga, they're all about breathe into it, you know, release,

(20:25):
sink into the pose.
You know, you hear that all the time. So it's kind of like that.
But you have these periods where you're contracting as hard as you can to
how this actually works
deep within the muscles or the brain, proprioceptive,
neuromuscular. So obviously, it's something to do with your
central nervous system. Well, I was gonna give you the killer example. And like, we won't get into the mechanics of it, because we're not probably talking about mechanics, but you can try this out. So if you stand up right now, you're more or less if you're at home and you're not in the car listening to us, but you maybe can't stand up. If you stand up right now and try to touch toes and try to do it stiff legged, so you're stretching out your hamstrings, maybe you can, you can't, but there's going to be a certain level of stretching. Similar, say, if you stretch, you do that, stand back up and then you tense your quads as hard as possible because it's generally, it's the muscle

(21:13):
on the opposite end that you want to try and tighten. Why? Because it's the, with the PNFs, it's the opposing muscle that you want to then get the release of the opposing muscle, so here quadriceps into the hamstrings. So if you tighten it, squeeze your quads as much as you can for whatever 10, 15, 20 seconds, I can't remember what exactly what it is and then you let it go and then you do the hamstring stretch, you should feel that the hamstrings a little bit looser. Unless you go a little bit deeper because of that reaction, I guess. Yeah, there you go. So I, I think unintentionally

(21:43):
did a lot of this when I was doing yoga.
When I first started yoga,
accidentally because I would be in this like crazy amount of pain and a pigeon stretch for example and I would tense up for a bit and then should remind me okay now sink into the mouth and so then I'll sink and then I'll go like just pull hard
and then sink so So I think I accidentally did this. So

(22:06):
I will say it works.
The caveat to this is I've been trying it out purposely recently where I will have a timer on my phone. I'm gonna go for a minute. I'll do 5 seconds on 5 seconds contracting 5 seconds and releasing.
And this has been with a purpose to get my middle splits down as deep and wide as possible.

(22:28):
And I've probably done this for about 6 weeks now.
I haven't seen any
benefit myself.
And
whether this is because I'm already at
like, a certain level, it's already a certain level, I think it's likely that and what's
holding me back from this last little bit is either
just bone structure, my hips will not allow me

(22:51):
to, like,
move in that socket anymore. You know, I
don't think I'm hyper flexible
kind of reaching physical limitation
status. You know, it's, it's one of those ones where it's like,
but I know I could work hard. There is another level I could go to.
But at some point, you just, you got to say like, okay, I don't think I can. Well, I know, I'm not going to work hard on this. Like, I've already explained just like, I'm not going to go further.

(23:20):
Or it's straight up muscle strength, and that I'm, I'm weak,
that in that I can't hold
a
middle splits with my feet flat on the ground.
Or ankle flexibility is also I can really feel it working on on my ankles and like,
pushing in
a very uncomfortable I'm going to roll my ankle sort of way. And I have rolled my ankles multiple times playing soccer in the past. So I know I've got weak ankles.

(23:49):
The weak ankle kyron is what they used to call me
Whack.
The when it gets to that sort of level, it's like, okay, well, the P and F stretching is not doing much for me anymore.
So where it could work for me is probably back bending because I have
that's probably the weakest

(24:09):
and most inflexible I'm at like, I'm still pretty fucking flexible. But
in terms of overall, yep.
And
that has not particularly worked for me recently.
One thing an opposite to this is
ballistic stretching, which gets into the dynamics
stretching section. And ballistic is where

(24:30):
you'll hear a lot of coaches
say it's too dangerous.
I like to follow Emmett Lewis's advice. He's been on the podcast before. We didn't particularly talk about stretching, but he's got a lot
on that if you if you check him out.
And
he's his kind of recommendation is it's a it's a good thing to add in

(24:53):
the trainer
that I mentioned as well. She was saying like if that guy's going to get the full the front splits, I do some of that. He'll probably need to do ballistics and ballistics is essentially like,
you're moving through the motion in a in a kind of forceful manner.
Kicking, if you will. So I'm like, kicking as hot high as I can to try and get my front splits a bit better. Right? I just get past the point of just

(25:20):
slowly stretching into it just swinging it up there. Correct. And I think in the last podcast, I
I recommended against this or I
perhaps didn't have
encouraging words to say about it.
I'm still on the fence because it's like,
I can see people doing real harm to themselves.

(25:41):
The
it's,
yeah,
it can be dangerous. Like you if you're going to pinch something, I think it's more likely you'll do it in a holistic manner rather than passive static manner.
Yeah, it's just something to look out for. And I have found that to be very, very useful. So
PNF ballistic, what works better? I don't know, I might have done one might have not done the other. And now I'm just

(26:05):
testing out the other ones. Well, I think those there's applicability to stretching. And again, just,
we would have talked about in the previous one, but it comes up again in my mind now is apply the stretching or apply that idea just like you apply any idea. Like, do you need it? What's the use for it? You know, all those sort of things, because at least for me, now as I stand
and I guess this is the transition that I talked about in that previous podcast and I'm looking at it now. For me now,

(26:31):
it's stretching that partners up with more longevity to doing the things that I want to do. It's, I still want to just be able to squat
and squat deeply. I still want to be able to do certain movements from a fitness perspective but a non fitness perspective. Well, here's a clear example,
my back has been kind of sore for the last couple of weeks. Okay.

(26:51):
And it part of it is probably just my general training that happens.
Part of it is and I've noticed that how I've been picking up my daughter has been a little bit of an incorrect posture. Oh! And I've been doing this all the time, right? She's lightweight as for a while, it's starting to not become that. Exactly! And so, you know, the general tendency that you have for me at least is you just bend over at the hips and you shake them up. I've started to notice like, oh damn, if I keep doing that, that's actually aggravating my back. She's weighing 13 kilos now, It's about that. Okay. And she knows once or twice that's fine. When you're doing it 20, 30, 40 times a day. I've started to notice that didn't really add up. So, what I've started to do now is when I do pick her up, I go into a full squat position.

(27:35):
I'm basically picking her up, hands underneath.
Turn her horizontal. Horizontal. Dead leg.
I've changed her hands to barbell grips. I'm able to just clean and jerk it. So, then I, yeah, go full squat,
arms on their armpits and then I can stand up kind of on a vertical position.
If I didn't have the mobility to do those things already

(27:56):
that would be a real challenging thing and again I fast forward to 20, 30, 40 years from now, I want to be able to
you know pick up general
weight
in varying positions
being able to get something overhead
and hold it and so in the greens of the top of the storage or something like that. There's been other static stretchers that I've added as well that it's not part of my

(28:19):
focus plan that I always do, but I'll sometimes throw it in there. I did it this morning because some days at the moment have become a run
and also just kind of everything else that I don't do through the week. So,
for instance, one of the things I've been trying to do is,
literally a kilo kettlebell. What I'll do is I'll just swing it overhead, I hold it by its like handle and just holding it overhead. A couple of things into the stability to make sure you're holding it by the handle so it's not falling,

(28:45):
it's overhead sort of
positioning for strength for the shoulder. But, it's a lot more just that that stretch position that most people don't get into.
So my idea of stretching us out to shift more towards, yeah, what are the various ways I'm going to see it being applied in everyday life in the next 10, 20, 30 years
where I'm going to need to just make sure that that's still around and capable of it. But,

(29:09):
primarily, absolutely primarily, it's going to be the mobility of my hips,
the mobility of my knees, which also means you know stretching those two aspects of it as much as possible so it doesn't become
locked in place, doesn't become,
you know, I've heard this of
older individuals who are in the 40s 50s and say, oh man! If I want to go do a leg session it takes me half an hour to just warm up so I can squat deeply. You know, I'm already there. You know, I'm like well I was like you know, I'm there you know

(29:39):
if I was to like walk right now and go and do
a squat, it's fine. If with a little bit of weight,
okay like a sudden again if it was a really really heavy weight, okay, I need to do something about it. But, I want to be generally capable
to a certain like realistic degree. So, I think stretching has now become much more that. Yeah.

(29:59):
Let's let's touch more upon that after the boost to gram launch the
because there's there's a couple of topics which I was like, Oh, yeah, well, we'll do that then. So boost to gram launch is where we like to
thank our supporters, people
who've donated into the to the show monetarily wise.
We do the value for value method here. So there's never any ads, no sponsorships, nor

(30:24):
anything like that.
But we do require some help from you at home. So this is a section where
we call out everyone. I think the only one was me this week. That's correct. Testing on the new splits. Yeah. So I can't confirm the new splits are in order. I can't confirm they're working as well.
And why don't I both
managed to pull out a decent sized pocket from our Albi accounts from just

(30:47):
the bits and bobs that have been going in there over the last couple of years. So
I it's certainly
when when we're taking out a fair chunk like that, it was like, oh, there's a there's a nice little big chunk. Yeah. A little bit of Bitcoin here. So very much appreciated to everyone who has done that. Sad puppy for this week.
Sad, sad puppy. Sad puppy. But it has been it has been sad puppy all of these years. So it's been very nice. Obviously, you know, looking back to the previous time that we did the stretching,

(31:14):
episode, I actually listened all the way to the very end around our call outs at the end. Oh, yeah. And it was what did we say? I don't know. I skipped that part. It was comments.
It was, you know, follow along.
It was share with a friend, but, you know, of course, at the time. Yeah. Podcasting
didn't exist. I didn't even exist in 2020.
It did, but they were just getting off the ground. That was probably right around when they were starting. Okay. June. Yeah. Like, it was like June 2020 or something like that. Yeah. I'd It would have been really close to that period where they were first starting and I came into it a little bit late. Like they were already

(31:46):
half a year and 40. Okay. Okay. 40 episodes in or something like that. So but yeah, it was interesting to look back at that time when we're doing that one and we're like, oh, yes.
It was very different. Yeah. 1 and a half years ago man that's that's a it's a big change it's a big change. It is which is a good lead into do you remember what you said why why you stretch

(32:06):
in that episode?
Kind of cool. Exactly. Okay. So we both asked each other like, why? Why do you stretch? And both of our answers were
related to performance? I think.
What why do you stretch now what would be the reason? Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay it's a good time from what I was saying before so it's very much not performance now. Yeah, it's it's it's all about,

(32:30):
functionality
it's There's 2 words I'm looking for which I'm gonna say. Oh, I want to know if you'll say it. Oh, okay. Well, my whole about being functional, it's about being healthy, it's about being
capable. That's probably more my thing. The 2 I was gonna say were avoiding injury.
Okay, what I was gonna say, yeah, and
what
has changed for me since then? So I was last time it was very much like, yeah, I want

(32:55):
to basically be at the peak or be improving or progressing. This is what stretching is for me.
Now it's
it's almost all
you
know, it's partly that
in the sense that I want to avoid the injuries because I am doing odd things like the one arm and handstands are really fucking hard and tough in the body.

(33:16):
But it's it's more now that I just don't want to get injured. And what what really
changed for me was one day,
wet, wet ish day like today where
there's plenty of water on the ground. There's plenty of mossy slippery places just out and about in general.
That's not raining. So you're like, okay, it can be fine. I'll just walk as normal. Drive the car as normal. Skid a little bit today on the way here freaked me out of it. The

(33:43):
as I was just going around this,
where we used to live in,
in Baringa Street,
there was a drain pipe, which had just a little leak in it. And so there was this one little patch of ground where it just got this constant drip. And so that constant drip made a little spot
where I think it like kicked up the dirt. Maybe there was some moss there or something. Well, anyway, just walking in one day, I stepped on that a little bit. And did the old

(34:08):
mini mini splits.
And
for whatever reason,
I was just in a very compromised position.
And I remember
it really
given me a jolt.
It was like I just
loaded on my spine, whatever it was that happened. I went,
thank fuck, I'm flexible. Because if I wasn't that would have hurt.

(34:32):
Yeah,
that that would have been really, really bad.
And
that kind of enlightened me on like, oh, okay, you know, this is this is I wasn't expecting this to be the payoff from all those years of stretching. But
that just then was that's a clear example. Here's here's I'll give you a clear example of maybe
ballistic training, ballistic stretching that will help out

(34:55):
yesterday and again I don't do
ballistic stretching, but I would say that I've held
some positions of stretching,
especially around my chest and shoulders. I've done for many years now. I don't, it's not like I'm doing a lot, but there's enough there that's more than a very stiff joint and here's going to come in practice. Yesterday,
I was laying,
in a

(35:15):
weird position. I was like, we've got some foam blocks upstairs. I was
My middle of my back was in a foam block that's completely
like nice and back like level into square and my back was kind of the top of my back was leaning back on a block that was sloping downwards. So, I was kind of bent one way and then on my feet, I was on like kind of set of stairs
bent the other way. So, I was like kind of like bent and my daughter was jumping on my chest and we were like having a bit of a fun game and she was, yeah, she gets tickled down. So, she actually loves the ticker. So, she jumped around and then on one particular thing, she

(35:49):
jumped but she jumped way too far and basically fell on towards like my left right hand side and I caught her as I showed her as falling, but it absolutely
stretched out my left shoulder and my arm to a certain position.
But it was either that or her like falling onto the ground. And I was able to catch her with my left hand,

(36:09):
unfortunately for my daughter, I wasn't, I didn't catch her like fully to the point that I protected her from the ground. I slowed her descent and then I was just like she like rolled on the ground. But at that particular point
on my left shoulder,
you know,
had I not done any stretching, if I wasn't mobile, I'm again not hyper mobile, just stretching enough.

(36:29):
Yeah, I would have like torn something, something might have gone wrong.
Aspects of it is strength, aspects of it is stability,
but honestly, it was just it stretched to a particular point that,
is probably beyond the just common range.
But, I've experienced being loaded in these extra
stages or movements and so it was like, okay, you know, I was able to just kind of like shake it off. Cool, fine, get back into it. And I think it's those

(36:56):
real world
practices and I think it's as,
following a term here, but it's like general
GPT general
I'll call it last time like general preparedness training, general preparation training or general life training. It's that aspect of I'm not stretching to do that like I'm not actively thinking when I'm doing those CAT stretches and

(37:18):
you know world's greatest stretch. I'm not thinking it in the conscious of oh yeah, so when my daughter does this, would I do a head stretch? No, no one thinks about it that way.
But I know that in part I'm trying to get
the
best amount of
application of stretching for the moment or yeah, the reduction of
injuries, but more for those times when I know, yeah, a lot's going to throw something like that in the way and look,

(37:43):
if
crazy scenario, if I don't know, you slipped like that on some water and you fell onto the splits and you were holding
40 kilos of pizzas. Books. Of books, right? And you fall, you're probably gonna rock to something, right? There's
as much as you want to be flexible or whatnot, you're probably going to injure something at that point. So, I also equally go, well, I'm not going to stretch to, I'm not going to train the stretch or my flexibility to a certain point because

(38:10):
freak stuff like that might happen and okay, I'm gonna get it yeah that's fine the amount of people who accidentally fall into a Van Dam split is pretty low you know yeah yeah I'm gonna waited waited as well probably not gonna happen that often and I'm not going to train for that but for the little things where I just require stretching
like absolutely, I'll continue to do that and that's going to become,
yeah, that'd look much more

(38:32):
long service of stretching, that's what it's become now, very much not like four and a half years ago, we're still very much younger me, mortals.
My mindset was very much on optimal performance,
physical performance,
that hasn't left me,
but there's a reality to what that actually means, how often I can do that as well. Now, a lot more talking to like my mate of mine yesterday, it was

(38:56):
there's a bit of a focus more on running right now for me. It's crazy for me to think 4 and a half years ago. Oh, yeah. I'm
spurned that I didn't talk anything about it. But now, I recognize
the level of
stretching that I need on my quads or my hips and it's just because of the change up in modalities that I'm doing right.
Just doing gym lifting is

(39:18):
different types of stress and different types of rigidity
that something leg running would build. So,
and I've never really experienced that, so there's more of oh, hey, I'm probably, I'm not doing it enough, but I know I can foresee that in the year to come. Okay, there's more,
stretches, let's say a cat stretch or things for my quadriceps

(39:39):
that I need to make sure I'm doing for if I'm going to continue running then I need to do certain things to also make sure I'm avoiding those injuries that are pretty commonplace if I don't do anything about it. For sure, have you ever injured yourself while stretching?
Yeah, not ever majorly.
A clear example is when we were at

(40:01):
Southbank on the green and we're doing those pancake stretches
and coming on the ground doing those squats on like the angle. Why were we doing that? That was when we caught up with Brodie and a few other people. You remember that? Recently? Yes. It was a couple of weeks ago. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. On that particular day, we're doing pancake
sitting and trying to touch like as fire as possible. Yeah. Now, I did

(40:24):
like 3, 5 months and then one particular I was like, okay, I'm going to really, really push really hard. And I went low, but it was that classic, like, okay, that was very hard push for how warmed up you were. And I felt it in my,
adductor
or probably a couple of weeks where I was like,
that was a little bit of a push. So, it was, it was the balance just between

(40:45):
if you push it a little bit harder, that's going to be an injury now, but it was just at the warning level. Now, of course,
one is still one. So I still heavy squatted, like for weeks to come. And it was painful in my ducts.
I have to be really careful that I was going heavy, but not enough that I was going to cause like serious, serious damage.
But that was the most recent one. Yep. So that's that's one of the classic ways you do it. Just

(41:07):
pushing through hard exerting. Yep.
The one which I didn't follow my own advice in was
in the last episode I mentioned
about
the weighted weighted stretching.
And
two clear examples from this spring to mind since then.
The very first time I met Brendan who
had been on the interview like 4 times on the podcast.

(41:31):
Really good friend.
Saw him last night.
1 arm handstand guru.
Your guru now. His guru. Oh,
damn. Look, if you can get 13 seconds here, you're a guru in my opinion.
He the very first time I met him, I thought he was a jackass because I saw him
with a girl
and he was demonstrating something to her and he had either a 10 or 20 kilo plate on his back and was doing a pancake stretch.

(41:58):
What were you just mentioning?
Legs out in the ground in front of you, torsos trying to go in between them.
And he
went too far,
pinched something. And this is before I met him. And I was like, what a jackass like, trying to impress a girl and hurts himself.
And he was using too much weight, man. If it was 20 kilos, definitely too much weight. Yeah. I've got a full pancake. I can get

(42:24):
abs basically to the ground on a if I if I warm it up a little bit extra
cold I
can get down
to chest easily.
20 KG is way too much even for me and I'm
I can basically do the full
you're not getting much further than me. Yeah. And

(42:46):
so that's that's definitely one where it's
real clear example. Even 10 kilograms I'm really, really careful with when I do that. And
it's it's iffy.
I question whether it's worth doing with 10 kilograms I'm gonna reveal something to the mere mortal at home
I've done the pancake stretch for 20 kilos before so it might
see with you I could say okay but you're probably strong enough in your back that you could just lift it up in a

(43:12):
terrible position. That's exactly what was happening. I was
in fact, I remember videoing it one time because I wanted because I've it's you know in your mind you're like oh man I'm going so far this must be dreadful. Dude. I remember looking at the video I was, first of all, I was hunched. Oh, yeah. And 2, I was going
like, you were saying chest to ground, man. I was probably

(43:32):
like more than 2 fists away from the ground. Yeah. And
viewing in the video, I was like, man, I'm not even this is not helping at all. Like, I'm not doing anything with this extra weight. So,
yes, be very careful,
loading it up like that. Yep. And the the way that I hurt myself through stretching, probably that one of the only times was a year or 2 ago, It was just before Brazil. So a year and a bit

(43:55):
I was doing a
Jefferson curl and
I've heard this plenty of times before. Don't use heavyweight with the Jefferson curls. And so Jefferson curl essentially where you're like one was describing before you're reaching down for your toes, but you're standing on a box so you can go further past your toes, which I can do because
I'm very flexible now. I can do it because I'm very short.

(44:17):
And so when I was doing this, I got up on the box and I was like,
I'm flexible.
I'm stronger than the hamstrings.
Time to load it up. I'll use 20 kilograms I'll use 20 kilograms
barbell so went down and to be fair whilst doing it I felt fine.
Afterwards
is what I noticed like oh I've got this little twinge in the just right through my left hand string like right in the middle and it didn't go away man it did go away the whole time I was in Brazil it was still hanging around

(44:50):
I didn't do the rehab to make it better. So
that's why it lasted so long.
And it's pretty good now.
If something twinges like it might be a little thing, but it will go away really quickly.
I didn't need to do that. That was silly. It was
too much. And I learned very quickly after that. Okay.

(45:12):
I just cut out Jefferson curls for a while.
And I'm certainly not going to do that again. So 20 kilograms
loaded loaded positions is danger zone. Probably
some other events. There's some learnings. Yeah, look, 10 kilograms is probably the max that I would recommend for really any stretch. I can't think of a stretch where you really need more than 10 kilograms 10 kilograms here's my well no I'll

(45:36):
I'll I'll in where you're coming from I agree
I'll I'll spin this one around give some learning from my past that I don't do anymore which is
if you're training to get a bigger muscles, not functional muscle, but bigger muscles,
the usage of the stretch position to any particular lift is really, really good. Why? Because you kind of get the extra benefit of stretching your muscle fibers for that extra tearing without

(46:01):
the actual movement being performed per se. So, what does that look like? You might do a set of bench press all sets by 8, right, let's just for instance, you set it 4 by 8 100 kilos. You might at the very least do an extra set or at the very end, you just hold the weight at a stretched position and that stretch just helps out in stretching out the muscle fibers, maybe hopefully a couple more tears in there without you actually having to do the

(46:25):
concentric ice is actually squeezing it out, right? So that aspect of it can be good, same thing,
you'll see out there with Dumbbell Flies and
the suggestion is get some Dumbbell, maybe a little bit light up and just go extremely wide. Now,
2 things for me now, 1, it's time intensive because you add that amount of stretching into your workouts. 2, I'm not optimizing anymore for that month much more functionally as opposed to obtaining more muscle. But I would say in that, man, load it up heavy, load it up as heavy as you can within

(46:56):
safety reasons, but I would only say
that has to be in those movements that you're doing it. I don't, you know, I'm doing, I wouldn't be doing like that sort of static stretching with a deadlift position, let's just say. Sure. That loaded position is probably not going to be as great, but in those
maybe other positions where it's
there is susceptibility for an injury. Yeah, be real careful on loading that up in a very heavy way. Yeah, I'm thinking more in the sense of

(47:22):
you're not you're not doing the exercise
to
build muscle or strengthen that position. So for example, Taylor's pose, butterfly,
you got the kettlebells on your knees.
You can try and do some lifts. I've tried doing that I found it didn't actually work well at
getting stronger.

(47:43):
Abductors,
where adapters I can't remember which one
you're better off going to the pussy machine,
aka
I don't actually don't know what it's called the one way you're just sitting down and you're spreading your legs like this
with the pads on the side to lift the weights.
You're better off doing that to actually build muscle. So I'm thinking more like really compromised positions where you're,

(48:06):
like say you wanted to stretch out your
your shoulder joints or something like you do the classic like
lift over
shoulders and if you had
and best I'm like bending forward and
driving my shoulders behind myself over my own head.
If you had a 20 kilograms weight there, that's that's not going to end well. You're not you're not working your muscles in any position there and sure you can it'll drag you down. The probability of injury versus gains is

(48:36):
diminishing is It's time to go overhead there. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Again,
if you're listening to this and you're 16 years old,
there's certain ways that stretching is going to be beneficial and you're probably more optimized. Look, if you're 16, you can basically do anything. Yeah. That's what I mean. You can you can do it. If you do get a
recover pretty quickly. Yeah. Yeah. But you can, you know what, fuck it. Just tell yourself. Just tell yourself. But you can focus on the

(48:58):
physical, on the performance,
whereas now where we are today, at least for me, yeah, it's very much on the
recovery,
prevent the injury
to help you do the things that I'm already doing in the day to day life. Yeah, the
I just had written down here, you know, who's who's stretching for, you know, honestly, I think it's for everyone. There's no

(49:19):
there's no one who I don't think can benefit from
at least a little minimal amount. You know, you could say, Oh, but Kyren,
I'm I'm not hyper mobile like you are, first of all, shut up. I'm not hyper mobile.
Not hyper flexible either. I'm not hyper or anything.
The
my joints don't work that way or, you know, all these sorts of things.

(49:42):
Everyone can benefit from a little bit and I look at myself and my brother as examples
myself because I used to be very, very inflexible from 10 years of soccer.
Now I'm at a really good level. I was actually thinking I should probably
take a video or some recording of me in front splits, middle splits because I don't think I actually have any and really I'm probably at like, pretty close to the peak now. And that would be worse. You got to document that. That's something happening.

(50:10):
My brother has just started doing yoga.
And so he's, you know, 27. So he's very much similar to me play soccer even longer than I did.
Even more flexible
than I was I would I would argue. So I went with him to one of his first yoga sessions and when he was trying to do the pancake,
he could not get beyond
the slightest little just tiny bend in his back. He was so stiff

(50:34):
in his hamstrings.
It flexes
lower back that
couldn't there was no depth. No depth. If he had the 20 kilograms on him, it would just compress his spine like he's not he's not going forward.
Yet now he was telling me recently like, oh,
and I've every yoga session I go to now I feel like I'm getting stronger

(50:55):
and deeper.
And it's like, yeah, yeah, you're still very much in the newbie phase where you're gonna get crazy gains
for probably the next year.
And then after that is when it starts getting a bit tougher
to really progress more.
But you know, he'll be able to get
3 quarters of the way to a splits

(51:17):
just by doing
a couple of days a week at yoga is all he needed to do.
And
he was just as
if not more inflexible than I was. So I definitely feel it's it's for everyone.
And very, very useful for injury prevention.
And it'll just make you feel good. Like, it'll be able to crack your back a little bit. Like I did right at the start of the episode.

(51:40):
It'll get cut out. But
it's just, it's a nice feeling when you've got
stiff shoulders stiff something like and you can just give it a little
little
a little
and like all those chiropractor videos you've seen seen them where they're
like,
that's probably not so great, but But if it if it's satisfying to watch, you know, it's satisfying for the person.

(52:07):
Last thing for me, something that happened. So recently, I went to go play tennis with my partner, like, just family.
And the day after, I was really sore. My back was really, really sore. And
I recognized, first of all, that just mobility
more more so mobility, more so,
the spine in my core. I just hadn't done that twisting rotation and hitting for a while. And so, it was just different. So, I was going to be sore because of that different movement. However, it was not saving grace, it wasn't that painful of that, but I did do a little bit of extra stretching for my lower back, for my upper back, for my core, for my spine to alleviate some of that feeling.

(52:45):
And some of the positions I was putting myself in, I guess if you had done nothing to hold some of those positions,
I guess would suck and then you wouldn't get the relief from some of those issues of mobility. And so, I go
yeah there's maybe underlying
mobility that I could have for tennis. Let's just say but I'm not going to be building that up and so the second best thing is have the ability to get into some of these stretching positions both in the knowledge of what to do but also

(53:11):
in the being able to get into some of these positions to stretch out and hold it and know that oh yeah,
you can breathe into it you can hold it for a certain amount of seconds and then maybe contract and then release again all those various tools just tools that if you do a little bit of stretching you can go a long way and in that up in that other way it's
if you really don't do any stretching you probably only need to put in 20 percent of the effort to get 80% of the value or towards what you need to do and then you can decide if you want to spend the other 80% to go that extra little bit better which you know parents probably spent 79%

(53:45):
to get, you know, to the 97th
percentile
and maybe it's the last few percent that's like, okay, I'm not going to put in double the effort just to get past that. You've achieved what you need to do. So be aware of what you're trying to achieve. Right. That's I was gonna be focal to how much you actually want to stretch. I wonder if there's some dude out there who's just going, oh, man. So I've heard it's really nice to have that chiropractic

(54:07):
stretch like that sound.
What if I purposely
don't stretch for the rest of my life to get the max to get the max tension release
and then, you know, back in that old days, perhaps when he's he getting hung drawn and quartered or
yeah hung drawn and quartered in particular is where they've got the ropes on each part of your arm and legs and then they just get horses I think to pull you in 4 directions and you just split off and like that

(54:34):
that minuscule second just
before just before death just before death where it's just like
yeah, enter Valhalla
of
the Garden of Eden. That
cracking noise would probably go around the earth like twice. It'd be like Krakatoa.
Krakatoa.
Krakatoa. Yeah. Krakatoa. Yeah.
That actually was a Krakatoa. It was just like a Someone who was 87

(54:55):
years old and then never cracked his body and then they just,
hoarded him and that was a crack. Yeah. That's why we call it Krakatoa. Right? It was just volcano. So Yeah. If you take anything away, folks, from this this session, it's,
I don't yeah. If you wanna have a really good one time feeling Mhmm. Just
prior to death when you're really old Yeah. Don't stretch at all. Yeah. If you don't wanna wait that long.

(55:18):
That's that's me. That's me. That's me. That's me. That's me. That's me. That's me. That's me. That's me. That's me. That's me. That's me. That's
me. That's me. That's me. That's me. That's me. That's me. That's me. That's me. That's me. That's me. Is there any comments? Yeah. I saw Lucas was in the chat. What up, Lucas? Also another good handstander. Pat was in the chat earlier. So thank you, everyone who joined us live. Really do appreciate you coming in. And, yeah, we'd love love to know your thoughts on stretching. How much do you stretch?

(55:50):
Is
there any any ways that you've hurt yourself stretching?
All of these sorts of things would be very beneficial to know. Reach out to us via any of the social media platforms.
Given this a share, I'm gonna go back to episode 49, giving a share a like,
comment.
Letting a friend know about the mere mortals podcast would be very, very much appreciated. Correct.

(56:12):
Is how you can contribute some value back to us.
Absolutely. Me more Lance, we're gonna leave it there. Thank you very much wherever you are in the world. 1.
App turn it out. Bye.
Good.

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The Evolution Of Our Stretching | From Optimal Performance To Injury Avoidance

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Evolution Of Our Stretching | From Optimal Performance To Injury Avoidance