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Staring
back at this interesting Dutchmen, Jackie thinks quick and hurls his
jacket at the formidable fighter he now faces. He attacks! Fists! Kicks!
A flurry of hands and feet until Jackie is knocked back unexpectedly.
The Dutchmen smiles as he skillfully raises the jacket, now wrapped
around his foot, all the way over his head without any sense of strain.
This
is where I pause Jackie Chan’s wonderful action movie Who Am I? and
when shock leaves me I let out a quiet, “ WHAT?!?!” The fighter
is Ron Smoorenburg and he will be the example for this month’s topic:
active flexibility.
Flexbility
in general is a necessary requirement for almost all athletes, traceurs
included, and proper development should be a big focus in one’s training
regimen. This, however, is common knowledge and if you want to know
more about this (which is often refered to as passive flexbility) may
I direct you to a book on the subject or to Muse’s wonderfully written
article here ( http://www.americanparkour.com/smf/index.php?topic=5887.0).
Active
flexbility is very different than its counter (passive flexibility)
and can also be quite complex and challenging to develop and sustain.
To use an example, becoming flexible enough to perform a 180 degree
sidekick is a challenge in its own, but to also be able to slowly raise
your leg to that position and hold it?! Now we’re talking crazy.
In
active flexibility the stretch of the antagonist muscle is always dependent
on the strength of your agonists. The “stretch” (which is really
more like an exercise, judging from the many comical faces a person
makes when attempting an active stretch) will always be significantly
difficult and there are rarely any easy points. Because of this, active
flexbility is easy to integrate into a training regimen but hard to
maintain due to its mentally taxing characteristics.
Although
the path is rough, a balance between passive and active is more beneficial
than one or the other. Attempting to increase flexbility through solely
passive means is a great way to increase your risk of injury in those
degrees of movement while only active stretching (to the exclusion of
passive) will take obscene amounts of your time to get anywhere. As
with most things, the most practical is a happy balance.
Similar
to other exercises, implementation into your daily or normal workout
routine should be slow and careful. Active stretches hover around the
line of maximal exertion and it can be easy at first to over-exert yourself.
Be sure to have a foam roller or a tennis ball nearby as muscle cramping/spasming
is a normal happening amongst beginners.
If
you are still confused as to what active flexibility might be, here
are some examples:
Manna
V-Sit
Straddle-L
Frontal
leg raise
Lateral
leg raise
Wall
extensions
Application
is relatively easy and is simple enough to be done daily. Although each
trainer will recommend a different range, I find 30 seconds spent near
maximal exertion in one particular stretch to be enough for a day. If
I were looking to improve the active flexibility of my hip flexors,
I may place 30 seconds of a straddle-L at the end of my routine. This
is all highly variable of course and you may add or subtract time or
frequency as you see fit.
If,
for example, you want to see better improvements, you may increase the
amount of time spent in the active stretch, increase the frequency (once
every other day, every day, grease the groove style, etc), or do both.
If you are not so worried about active flexbility and the 30 seconds
causes excessive soreness, perhaps decreasing the time spent in the
stretch is warranted or a drop in frequency. For those that want to
mix up their training, even adding as little as 1 pound to your foot
can cause drastic changes in difficulty.
As
a traceur, being able to actively stretch your muscles can help you
accomplish many new tricks or skills and can be beneficial in many ways.
For instance, being able to pike yourself into a V-Sit may have beneficial
translations into a max distance precision jump; allowing you to extend
your legs as far as possible (normally inhibted by the flexibility of
the hamstrings and strength of the hip flexors). The strength that is
developed is very beneficial for the stability of very key joints in
our bodies such as the hip and shoulder girdle which receive a hefty
load of stress from the kind of work we do.
Active
flexibility is a useful tool we can use to not only train our bodies
and help them become stronger, but also a very effective way at controling
our bodies and ensuring joint stability and safety in this physically
demanding discipline. To follow is a list of exercises that can be done
with their corresponding target area.
Hip Flexors
-
Straddle-L sit
-
Seated Pike
-
L-sit
-
Standing front leg
raise
Shoulder Girdle
-
Wall extensions
-
Prone stick raise
Hip Abductors
Compound
-
Arch-ups
-
V-Sit
-
Manna progressions
-
Bridge walks
Happy Training
Charles Moreland
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