Flexibility Tips

Tip #2 - Support Your Center, Support Your Base

After the Breath and Relax attitude, add to your flexibility tips favourites the Support your center, Support your base.

This has to do with body posture. Maintaining a good body posture is really important in everyday life, when exercising and also when you are doing flexibility exercises. When stretching, this concept can easily be forgotten because flexibility is more associated with relaxing the muscles than it is associated with good posture.

This flexibility tip will focus on using your abdominal muscles to hold your body in a good posture. If they don't, your body will try to protect itself by fighting the stretch. This" fight" will creates tension in your body and this tension needs to get out sooner or later. Usually, it's the weakest part of the body (in a certain position ) that gets affected.

But let's stay away from that!

So, if you often feel that your muscles are contracting against your will to stretch, read carefully this little tip and try to apply it in your next stretching session

Do the Support your center, Support your base!

Supporting your center is different then simply contracting all your abdominal muscles as hard as you can. You need to focus on your lower abdominal muscles.

On women, they lie on top of the uterus. On men, well... You know ;)

Try it here!

Breath in by your nose and blow the air out by your mouth...
Take a moment to relax your whole body
Take a special moment to relax your shoulders and neck area
Take another moment to stand tall. Make yourself taller as if someone was pulling you up by your hair.
Now breath out and contract your lower abdominal muscles enough to feel supported...

It should feel like holding a baby, but with the lower abdominal muscles...

I know, I know... Strange analogy! But that's exactly how it feels.

Try to imagine yourself holding a baby. Your arm grip would be firm to give the baby good support, but gentle, to nicely hug the baby's body.

So contract your abdominal muscles firmly, that will give good support to your center. And contract them gently, to be able to still breath and move freely.

It might sound contradictory, but just try it! First, practice it standing up and when you feel comfortable with it, try it while doing any flexibility exercise.

Why do this?

This will allow you to:

Protect your body: The human body can be stretched... a lot! But you need to have all your body parts aligned properly if you want to keep your body healthy. Supporting your center will help you with that.
Give you a better stretch: When your base is supported, your body feels like you are in charge! It feels like you are taking good care of its integrity. In this situation, your body won't have the reflex to fight the stretch as you might be experiencing in the form of pain or stiffness. Your muscles will be liberated from this"fight" and they will be able to stretch freely... giving you a better stretch!
Stretch the right muscles: When you "fight" the stretch, the tension created is simply redirected to the weakest part in the area of the stretch. If you experience knee pain during or after stretching, it might have something to do with this. But when your muscles are not fighting your stretch, no tension is created in the body and the proper muscles are simply free and available to stretch.

Try to integrate my flexibility tips in the way you do all your stretches. It's an attitude more than an specific exercise. If done right, you'll notice a big improvement in the quality of your stretching sessions. The pain will go away and instead you'll experience a heathy stretching sensation

Now just give it a try and remember that I am always opened to reciev some feedback about your experience.

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