Flexibility For The Not So Bendy

There are so many great flexibility classes out there these days, especially online. But there really aren’t many options for the not so bendy among us (i.e. me). I have been taking quite a few classes online over the past year and a half and the trend that I am seeing is that flexible people teaching these classes have no knowledge of stiff, inflexible, and muscle bound bodies.

I have found myself in plenty of classes where the instruction is geared towards those that already have a certain level of mobility, especially in the hips and shoulders. My shoulders are more like “polders”. All of the pole training mixed with bodybuilding has me struggling with even the simplest range of motion use in most flex classes. And don’t get me started on these old hips! At 55 years old, I feel like I’m pushing a bolder uphill just to get a millimeter of progress anywhere.

Now, having classes geared towards those folks that already have good mobility and are quite flexible naturally is awesome: I’m not mad about that at all. What gets me thinking though, is the lack of information out there for those of us who are not so blessed. I’ve taught many flexibility classes in gyms and pole studios over the years, and I pride myself on learning and understanding the different types of bodies that came to train with me. And if I didn’t know something, I researched it.

Now I have developed flexibility programming for myself, which I use all of the time. And I’m making some decent progress (albeit slow). But my quest to learn more about extreme flexibility like contortion on my not so naturally flexy body has left me high and dry. Don’t get me wrong, I’m really loving contortion training, I’m just at a loss to find someone who can answer my specific questions about my body’s issues.

So where does a person without natural flexibility go to learn how to strengthen their muscles at their end range? How does someone who isn’t hypermobile get into extreme flexibility training without having to sit out of most of the lesson? That’s the questions I’ve been asking myself. And as I go deeper down this rabbit hole of flexibility training, I’m beginning to develop my own programming for people with bodies more like mine.

I call it Lengthen & Strengthen, and I’m looking forward to sharing it with the world very soon. For now, this blog will serve as my outlet for all of my thoughts, experiments, success and failures on this journey of mine into the world of flexibility.

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