A Stretching Technique to Get Flexible Faster
Have you ever thought "I'm just a stiff person"?
For most of my life, that's what I believed about myself. I just wasn't naturally flexible; I wasn't blessed to be bendy like some people. (Then I proved everyone wrong, including myself.)
I'm 31 now, but it wasn't until the last few years that I was able to even touch my toes or raise my arms directly overhead.
Because flexibility didn't seem to come easily to me, I focused on strength training. I was comfortable there. For the most part, I ignored flexibility training, except for the occasional half-assed quad stretches or a few mindless arm circles.
I'm sure you've seen the type of stretching I did. It's common in any Globo Gym warm-up.
We're told to stretch because it's a "good warm-up," but mainstream fitness culture doesn't teach us much about how to improve our flexibility.
It seems like you're either born flexible, or you're just screwed.But that's not true.
In this guide I'm going to show you how to get more flexible, even if you're currently as stiff as a 2x4.
But first, we need to address one thing.
The Myth of "Flexible People"
Because I wasn't naturally good at flexibility, I told myself I wasn't a "flexible person." Rather than actively working on my flexibility, I let myself off the hook with an excuse. It wasn't in my "genetics," whatever that means.Now, there might have been some truth to that. Maybe it didn't come as easy to me as some, but it didn't mean it was something I couldn't improve on with time and effort.If you're struggling with your flexibility, the first thing I want you to do is reframe the way you look at it.
Instead of telling yourself, "I'm not naturally flexible" shift your mindset to "I'm always working on becoming more mobile and free in my body."
It might seem simple or hokey, but I've found that our bodies are all bound up with our beliefs when it comes to not just our strength and coordination, but also our flexibility. After all, your brain is a part of your body, isn't it? It's just as important to train as your muscles. It's important to address the mental side just as much as the physical. Otherwise, you're unlikely to stay motivated to follow through on your training.
This is a shift from a belief where you have no control over your genetics, to one where you have control, since you can get results when you show up and put in the work.
Cut yourself some slack, our culture doesn't do us any favors
Remember to go easy on yourself. Our modern culture of stagnancy and prolonged sitting doesn't help us out much in the flexibility department. If you have a desk job, you may have to work a little harder.
Yes, moving more in nature will help. But we also need to address the lack of mobility to a certain degree in order to prevent injury.
Stretching and mobility work is not just a warmup
The main reason average folks don't improve their flexibility is because they consider stretching to be the warm-up, and weight lifting, bodyweight excises, or cardio to be the core focus of their workouts.
This is why you see people doing half-assed quad stretches.
It's also a myth. Improving your range of motion is something you need to work on just as seriously as strength or cardio training if you want to see results.
The missing element in stretching
Even if you do treat stretching as a serious component of your training, you are likely making a big mistake that the vast majority of people make: only doing passive stretching.
What is passive stretching? It's where an external force is assisting your body into reaching the position.
A good example of this is the pec stretch done against a doorway. You're using the door and the weight of your body, not your muscles, to get into the stretch.
The opposite would be actively using your back muscles to achieve the stretched position. Take a look at the difference, side-by-side:
This kind of stretching is great for relaxing, and it absolutely has its place, but it doesn't build much internal control over the range of motion.
An example of active flexibility, on the other hand, would be where you're using the muscles of your back to pull your arm and pec into a stretched position.
Unless we're actively engaging our muscles and sending neural drive to them, we won't be creating very useful flexibility.
A perfect example is a person that can do the splits on the floor. Sure, it looks like a nice photo for Instagram, but could they actually control that range of motion without assistance from the floor? Could they call on their flexibility to deliver a head kick? Probably not, because the passive flexibility needed for floor splits doesn't transfer to actively being able to control that flexibility while standing.
How to do active stretching to become more flexible, faster
If passive stretching is like breathing and relaxing into the positive, active stretching is the opposite. It's creating tension while you're in a stretched position.By sending neural drive (tension) into our tissues, we're asking our bodies to control the end range of motion. The more we prove to our body that we can control a position, the more range it opens and makes available to us.
Because we're working at end range, in a stretched position, we want to be careful not to tense up too hard, or too fast. And we definitely want to warm up before we work in this range. You should ramp up tension progressively. Aim for about 50-70% of your max effort. Always stop if you reach a point of pain. Pain is a signal that the body doesn't trust the movement, and you need to back off a bit. It could even be an indication that you need to rehab with gentle movement or seek help from a professional to release the tissues.
Here's a video demonstrating active stretching to open the shoulders. Once you understand the principle, you can find all sorts of ways to apply this concept.
Consistency is everything
I think that every day we should be doing things to maintain our flexibility. Bare minimum, we should move all our joints through their full range of motion each day.
That's your baseline, non-negotiable work if you want to maintain the ranges you currently have and not get any stiffer than you already are.
If you want to improve your active flexibility, I recommend training each joint you're wanting to work at least twice a week for 20-30 minutes. So if you want to improve you hip and shoulder flexibility, you could train flexibility for an hour every Tuesday and Thursday.
These sessions should feel like work. Cramping is to be expected. You'll likely be sore the next day. If not, you might not be working hard enough.
It may take some experimentation, so find what works for you. Personally I find doing a little bit every day to be the approach that helps me stick with it.
Flexibility is about expanding your freedom of movement
Use it or lose it is the way our body adapts to life. If we don't use our full range of motion, our bodies end up making those ranges stiff and unaccessible. The more we reclaim our flexibility, the more flexibility our body wants to give us. In can become an upward spiral of progress.One of the biggest barriers I see to people sticking with flexibility work as a consistent practice is that it can be very boring and tedious.
Holding a position for 2+ minutes, where you're flexing and cramping... it's not fun.
The solution I see to this is to keep remembering the freedom you are working toward. That's the ultimate goal of this type of training after all, expanding the movement possibilities you have available to you. It's about unlocking new ways you can play, explore your body, and find joy in movement, not just pain and tension.
The more range of motion you open up with your "boring" flexibility work, the more creative and free you'll become in your movement.
You'll be able to use your hips not just to get into a yoga position, but to climb better, dance more freely, or have more fun in the bedroom.
More active flexibility = more options in life and play.
Does it just feel like everything is tight, and you're not sure where to start?
Check out my free workshop on the foundations of physical freedom.
How I Killed My Fitness Goals to Become Stronger, Happier and More Pain Free
So, I guess I'll just admit it. I used to be one of those guys.
You know, the kind that create wild, outlandish goals and obsess about them. The kind that listen to Tony Robbins audiobooks and get inspired to take Massive Action at All Costs.Yeah, that used to be me.Not anymore though.Killing my fitness goals has made me healthier and happier. And by not having goals I'm even making progress faster in the direction I want to go.The last part wasn't a typo. I'm actually getting to where I want to go faster by not having goals.So, what am I doing instead?First I need to tell you about a quote that really pissed me off.
Either the dumbest, or wisest quote ever
I like to think I'm a man of principle, so when I first heard this quote, I was simultaneously intrigued and really angry.
"You have the right to your labor, but not the fruits of your labor."—The Bhagavad Gita
How can we not have a right to the fruits of our actions? How does this make any sense, whatsoever? It's enough to make any decent capitalist infuriated.Let me explain. :)We don't have a "right" to the fruits because we cannot control or dictate them. We can plant the seeds, water, tend and nurture, but we have no control over what happens next. A flood, tornado, or tsunami (okay that's a stretch), might come and ruin our crops.If the fruits come, then yes, we should enjoy them. But what this quote is trying to say is that we aren't entitled to results, because they are beyond our control.It's another way of saying the saying you've heard a thousand times: focus on what you can control, forget about the rest.In other words, there's zero point obsessing about the outcome or goal because you can't control it. It makes much more sense to focus your energy on the process.But there's another problem with goals, that goes far beyond you not being able to control them.
Why goals often make us miserable
The problem with goals is that they immediately make you feel like you are not where you want to be. Seeing where you're not, you feel the pain caused by that gap. The bigger the distance between you and your goal, the bigger the pain, and the more unfulfilled you are with where you are now.Creating goals can make us obsessed with the outcome, and the future we'd like to see ourselves in. If your goal is to do the full splits, but you're a year away from accomplishing it, your attention will likely be focused on how far you have to go to get there. Even while making progress along the way, it's easy to ignore your achievements and obsess with how much further you must journey. After all, you don't want to lose focus, become lazy and not reach your goal.So, what are you supposed to do? Become a lazy bum and give up any desire to do and be more?Nope.There is another way.
Focus on systems and showing up
The answer isn't necessarily to never have any goals and to never reach for anything greater. We're wired as humans to continually look to better our lives. If you're anything like me, it would be very painful for you to try to stifle your desire to grow, do and be more.The biggest breakthrough I've made is instead of focusing on goals, to focus on creating systems.My biggest "goal," if you even want to call it that, right now is to have healthy joints. I want to "make shit work nice" as Dr. Spina would put it. If all my joints work nice, I can move better and feel stronger with whatever I choose to do, whether it be climbing at the gym or doing parkour in the forest.Instead of obsessing about certain goals with my shoulders or hips, I'm focusing instead on daily habits, continually working on my mobility with FRC principles.My focus is on creating a practice that feeds and nourishes me, and is adaptable to days of fatigue, sickness, or whatever compression modern life might be bringing me.I don't want an approach so rigid that I have to force (gotta catch that goal!), even when it's not working for me. Back to the example of the splits, if my goal is to achieve them by a certain date, and I'm noticing some pain in abduction of my left hip, I'll probably push through the pain because not doing so will delay my realization of my goal. This will lead me to injury and more pain in the long term.But if my approach is to create a practice of expanding range of motion in my hips, and the goal is to simply show up and be present to the process, then there is no hurry. My practice has room for times when things feel off. This way I'm able to listen to my body and stay patient, because after all, I'm doing this practice for life. I reach the goal every time I show up and stay connected to my practice.
You can control the system, and you can control showing up
The best part about focusing on systems is that you can actually have control over the process. You can choose how you design the system, and how you show up to your practice. You might occasionally jot down a goal so your practice matches the horizon you're sailing toward, but that's about it. Then it's back into the beautiful work of doing your practice.One way says "I've gotta get this goal as soon as possible so I can feel whole"The other says "I'm whole right now, this practice will ensure I'm on the path to rewards both now and in the future"What are your working towards right now?How can you create a system or habit that helps you focus on what you can control?If you're looking for a starting point, one simple practice is a morning ritual for daily joint mobility. Here's the routine I use every day.Note: Big thanks to James Clear and this post for inspiring me to change the way I think about goal setting.
Stay Patient: Rewilding Yourself Can be a Long, Meandering Path
Immersing myself in the process of learning how to be a wild human again, I've found that it's a long, winding process.
I wanted to write about this, in the hopes that it might help you on your journey, whether it's to regain your primal strength, eat a more paleo diet, or just be comfortable taking care of yourself in the wild.But first, some backstory.In the beginning I was motivated by the desire to be strong. I've always been interested in athletics and this drive to be the best version of myself possible. But I was particularly interested in the realm of physical strength, endurance and being able to move really well.That desire eventually led me to realizing that fitness in our world is a place of specialization. Not needing to move to live, we express our physicality in sports, or movement disciplines like yoga or martial arts. In our fitness culture there often isn't a general desire to just want to move well. Divorced from a relationship with our habitat, we're no longer seeing fitness as being a competent, capable human that's well adapted to your environment. I think that's starting to change with things like MovNat, but it's still a process that's unfolding before us.Questing to reach the peak of my physical performance, I kept slamming myself up against a wall of injury and fatigue. At the time it was incredibly frustrating, because I thought the answer was just to work harder, and it seemed the harder I worked, the worse things got.In hindsight though, like it always does, it made total sense.Here's what I was trying to do:Sit for 10+ hours a day, then do 2+ hours of maximal strength training, focusing mostly on static holds.I was doing lots of gymnastic training at the time, holding positions, like a plank, hollow hold, lsit or handstand.I considered these movements to be the epitome of strength and body control.The problem was my work was largely on the computer. Add on top that our culture of sitting that adds even more time in a right angle, whether it's on the couch, driving, or sitting at a bar. We sit a lot, and I was definitely overdosing on it.So, basically you have sitting in a rigid, slouched position, then adding on hours of training on top of that being even more rigid.Static + static = not a happy body.My body was wrecked, naturally, and I felt it. I felt like an old man getting out of bed at the age of 26. It made zero sense.What it did though was motivate me to figure out was I was missing in my approach. That eventually led me down the path of asking what a natural movement approach would be for a human.The answer was definitely not sitting and static holds, I'll tell you that much.Anyway, I'm glossing over a lot of steps in this story, but the point is that it wasn't a straight path from pain to living a fully wild movement lifestyle. In fact, it's something I'm still working on today. It's improved by leaps and bounds in the last few years, but I have a ways to go. And I might not ever get to a utopian movement life.Right now I'm experiencing a similar process with diet. My long term vision for my life is to live with food sovereignty. I would like to grow, hunt, fish, and gather the great majority of my own food. This is what a real paleo diet means to me, not just eating lots of coconut oil from 2,000 miles away and domesticated cow meat (even if they're grass fed).I'm making progress here too, but I'm a lot less developed than in the movement and fitness area of things.And that's still with:- Volunteering and helping on my friend's micro farm nearly every week from spring to autumn- Starting a garden in our yard- Taking multiple wild food workshops- Reading tons of books about wild edibles in my region- Going out foraging at least once a week- Fishing, practicing archery, tracking and learning as much as I can about huntingI've done a lot, but I'm still probably years away from my goal.Why am I saying all of this and what is the point of this post?I want to remind you that it's a process. Learning to be wild again, if you really want to do it all the way, is going to take years.And because it's going to take years, maybe even decades, you need to be patient. Extremely patient.It's easy to get overwhelmed, it's easy for your job or problems or lack of experience to get in the way.It's easy to want to get frustrated and give up because you feel alone.It's easy to just say why even bother, because it's hard having all the demands that modern living puts on you, and to not let that stress keep you from devoting the time and discipline to make a wild life possible.It's easy to not go outside when it's cold and wet and netflix and games on your phone are way more pleasurable (in the short term).It's easy to give up, because, fuck, it's hard trying to figure this stuff out as an adult, when no one taught you anything, and you never had a tribe to help you learn how to be a wild human.I'm saying all of this because it's so, so important to let it be a process. To give everything you have to create as wild of a life and body that you truly want and know is possible, but to also have some grace with yourself. To also be patient and celebrate every step you take on the path.You can now hold a resting squat comfortably? That's amazing. Most people can't.You're eating a mostly local, seasonal paleo diet even if it's reliant on industrial farming? Badass, that's something most people can't claim.You can climb a tree, identify an edible plant, or move each of your toes individually? Those are all amazing things, each an important piece of the rewilding web.The more I dive into the process of rewilding, the more I find there is so much more to learn.Right now I'm learning how to live comfortably in the wilderness, without gear made by industry. I'm a total noob in this area, but it's so exciting to learn and grow so rapidly. It's amazing to learn how to make fire without matches and connect with that lineage of our ancestors. I suck at it right now, but I try not to get frustrated. It's all a part of the process, and I'm leveling up all the time.There's so much more to learn. And the truth is that I don't know if I'll ever live a totally wild life. I like the city (sometimes), and I enjoy things that technology has to offer, like typing things into a computer right now to remind you to be patient. But I do know that I want to be more wild, and integrate that into this modern life I have as much as possible.When you have such bold visions for your life, it's important to not let them overwhelm you. That's the recipe for wanting to give up.Stay in the process, focus on the next step, and enjoy the journey. That's what it's all about, anyway, right?
How We Survived a Sexless Marriage
For a long time I debated whether or not I would talk about sex, money, or some of the other taboo subjects on Uncaged Man.That's probably because it's easier to stick to primal movement, nutrition and other safe topics, like rewilding your lifestyle.But as I've been thinking more about what it means to be an uncaged man, I've decided that this is an important subject to speak about here. Perhaps it's even essential.Rewilding the domain of sex is just as important, if not more than any other area. Sex shouldn't be left unenlightened, it's an essential part of who we are, that often gets left in the dark.Today I want to bring sex into the light by sharing with you my journey to confidently embodying my wild sexuality, but I can't do that without first telling the story about how my wife, Ev'Yan, and I survived a sexless marriage.It seems strange for me to talk about this now, because my wife after all, is a sex coach.But it didn't start that way.For a long time, neither of us were sexually liberated. Much like the rest of our lives as domesticated humans, sex was just another domain that remained caged and neglected.We both received a lot of conflicting programming about sex, from religion and society. Raised Christian, I was taught that sex is a sin, and that desire is carnal and unholy, something married people must do for the sake of having children. Not to be enjoyed, but accepted as a necessary evil.Society, on the other hand, taught me that I was supposed to fuck lots of women, and that my worth as a man was based on how many women I conquered with my penis. The more women I fucked, the greater my prowess as a man grew.So it's no surprise that at the beginning of our relationship, I was completely identified with my performance sexually. My self worth was wrapped up in whether or not she wanted me.At the time, Ev'Yan was struggling to come to terms with the trauma she experienced in a previous relationship, while also battling feelings of shame and guilt. Again, thanks to good ol' Christianity.All of that contributed to us not having much sex.As you can imagine, my self-worth took a major hit. I was used to all the girls I had previously dated wanting sex whenever I wanted it. Little did I know, they probably felt like it was their "duty" to "serve their man," something Ev'Yan was taught that created a lot of guilty feelings on top of the shame.So, whatever was blocking wife's desire, I took personally. I thought that it was about me, that I wasn't good enough, or that I couldn't come on to her in "just the right way." After all, I never had a problem with this before.And to make things even more confusing, our relationship wasn't always this way.In the beginning we were both filled with lust, we could barely keep our hands off each other. Because we lived in separate cities, and because we both had jobs, we would see each other only on a weekly basis. This just added fuel to the fire. The distance between us, combined with the fiery energy of a blossoming relationship, erupted in passionate love-making every time we met.But once we moved in with each other, the fire was suddenly, and shockingly, extinguished.The void of intimacy left me feeling confused and hurt. There were so many nights I cried myself to sleep. I thought something must be wrong with me. I began to see her not wanting sex as a rejection of me, as me not being good enough.The shame she felt for not wanting to have sex just made me feel worse. Again, if only I could make her feel better, or more comfortable, I could magically heal her. Then she would open up to me. Then it would be all better.David Deida said once that the chronic loop in a man's mind is, "Am I succeeding, or am I failing?"I felt like I was constantly failing.At first, I made it my responsibility to "fix" her. I tried every technique I could think of. I would act nonchalant and aloof. I would try to touch her gently, or firmly. I would tell her jokes, tickle her, gaze deeply and lovingly into her eyes, or sweet talk her.I tried everything.But mostly, I tried to pretend that I didn't care if we had sex or not. Which of course, was a lie. I'd roll over, turning away from her at night and try not to let her hear me cry. It only made the shame she felt worse, and letting her know I was crying meant that I was showing her just how weak I was.So from then on I tried to act like I didn't want sex. That I was fine without it.She would ask if I wanted to take on another lover. "Really, it's okay if you do, I understand," she would say.To do that for me, though, signified that I accepted defeat. I still believed that it was up to me to make things better. Our love could heal everything. If only I could find a way to love her hard enough.Of course, that didn't work. Over time we had to realize that this wasn't about us, it was about shame. It was about healing the trauma and internalized guilt buried underneath the surface. Nothing could be transformed before it was looked at with compassion, and allowed to be let go.Even as we began to do our own work—for Ev'Yan it was on her shame and trauma, for me it was on my identifying with her wanting me—we still had a lot of tension to cut through.One of the hardest things that happens is that over time in a sexless relationship, so much tension and negative energy gets associated with even thinking about sex that you just stop wanting to even try. The idea of even considering it feels exhausting. It becomes easier to just avoid it altogether.We both dreaded bedtime as it loomed closer each night. Would tonight be the night we do it? Or would it just be another round of disappointment?Then we finally made a breakthrough.But it wasn't after processing our repressed emotions, and choosing new beliefs, though those things certainly helped. No, it was after agreeing to not have sex.At the time this seemed borderline ridiculous to me. I mean, we already weren't having sex, why did we need to make it official? But at the advice of our therapist, we took it off the table completely.I thought it was pointless, I believed that it would only amplify our despair. Then something unexpected happened. The pressure to have sex was lifted from both of us. We felt lighter. We felt like we could breathe and just be together without dreading whether it was going to happen tonight or not.And something even more interesting happened. Because sex had been forbidden, we suddenly wanted it even more. It was like the cookie jar that we weren't supposed to reach into. The naughtiness made it that much more exciting and interesting to us.One night, we finally said "Fuck it" and had sex anyway. We didn't care if we were breaking our therapist's commandment, because who the hell is she to tell us what to do anyway? We're grown-ass adults.So we did it.We had sex. For the first time in a long time. And it felt good.It felt like a weight had been lifted off of us.That was the beginning of finally being able to come to sex from a place of excitement and levity again.No, it didn't transform everything overnight. We didn't start fucking like rabbits every day. There was still work to do.She still had to remind herself that she wasn't broken. Releasing the pressure on herself to want sex all of the time helped. Not having to live up to the media's image that every woman should be a voracious "sex goddess" helped.And I had to stop trying to fix her, or fix what was happening between us. The more I really let go and relaxed, the more ease it brought into our bedroom. I learned that it wasn't all about whether or not it was going to happen at bedtime, that sex was more than just an event. Sex can happen all day, even if we're not fucking. It can happen through subtle touches, glances and flirtatious gestures. Like most dense men, I learned that putting more effort into foreplay throughout the day made it more likely that we would have sex later. But even if it didn't happen, that was okay.I'm sharing this with you because I've been realizing that this story is so much more common than we think. A lot of couples struggle trying to fit the image of a perfection relationship. Trying to do that only gets in the way. It adds pressure that makes everything unnecessarily harder.I want you to know this: If you're not having sex twice a day, or even twice a month, there is nothing wrong with you.One of the most powerful things Ev'Yan and I learned was that we get to decide what kind of sexual relationship we want to have with each other. For us, that means choosing depth over quantity. It means caring more about how intimate we are with each other than fulfilling some arbitrary quota someone else decided meets the criteria for a "successful" relationship.Now our sex is something we look forward to. It's no longer a chore or a dreaded expectation.So yes, it can change. It doesn't have to be this way forever.If you're in a sexless relationship, please know that you're not broken, and you're not the only one that's been through this.One of the most awesome things that's come out of this is that by Ev'Yan doing this work on herself, she's been able to help other women step out of shame and into their own erotic power. She's gone from feeling ashamed and broken, to helping women blossom into their sexual selves and find out that they aren't broken either.You can find out more about her work here.Finally, if you got some value out of this story, I please ask that you share it. The more sex can come into the light, the more we can all embrace our erotic nature, without shame.
It's Time to Reclaim Your Primal Strength
Things have been a bit quiet around here lately. That's because I've been busting my ass putting together the best possible program for reclaiming your primal strength as a man.This is just version one, but I'm extremely proud of it. And based on your feedback (thank you) I've created a mobile-friendly member's area for you to stream all of the workouts.Here is a preview of what you can expect with the program:And if you want to know more about why you might want to join the program, this video explains pretty much everything you need to know: About half of the spots for the founding membership have been taken. These members will get exclusive feedback and coaching from me, as well as access to a private community to get accountability and support from other members.If you're wanting to finally get serious about your fitness, and be fit for the real world, this program was designed for you.If you want to stay on the couch and continue letting domestication make you weak, you won't like anything about this program.Ready to finally uncover your body's true potential?Learn more and join the Uncaged Body program here.FYI: This program will be closing next Wednesday at midnight, so I can start working with all of the men that have joined and get feedback to make it even better.If you want in on this, now is the time.