[cofe]

i've read back through various threads, and various bollocks on the 'internet', but i was wondering if people had good, first-hand advice for lower body stretches that work for climbing (high steps and the like). Groin, hips, hamstrings?

stuff from people who know what they're talking about and/or have gone from being unbendy to being bent would be much appreciated. i've got a bit of a regime going but i'm still not convinced i'm not shitting in the wind.

ta.

[SA Chris]

I really find the ones involving sitting down with soles of feet together, then pushine out knees with elbows and the option of opening out soles of feet like you were opening a book to be quite satisfyign and beneficial.

Also the section of a sun salutation that you do on the floor good for adding a bit of dynamic movement into the stretch.

[Johnny Brown]

1. Sit with back straight (against wall if necessary), place soles of feet together and pull in as close as possible without back collapsing, push down on knees.

2. Get down on all fours, fairly square, swing the soles of your feet together then try to lower hips to floor. May cause offence/ attract derision if done as part of a warm-up.

And my personal favourite:

3. Knee your shoulders whilst shadow-boxing.

[Andy B]

I've seen people attempt to gain benefit from standing on one leg and then repeatedly jerking the other knee dangerously close to their face so that they look like an epileptic chicken with tourettes.

[Plattsy]

Love the first 3 on here for my hamstrings.

Edit - Says for tight hams. Sorry. Regular hams do the same just go that little bit further. So in stretch1 attempt to reach your toes and wrap a couple of fingers around your big toes. Gently pull your foot towards your body. Stretch2 ditto. Stretch3 I'd be tempted to keep my back straight in a waiter style bow but that is a probably a personal preference of mine.

[cofe]

I've seen people attempt to gain benefit from standing on one leg and then repeatedly jerking the other knee dangerously close to their face so that they look like an epileptic chicken with tourettes.

I don't know why I'm doing any actually word. I can still hear the sound of your jaw hitting the floor when I blew your mind with my bent-ness at the clam chowderstone last year. 

[JamesD]

Hip, Lower back, and abdomen stretches, the 3 most neglected areas in lower body stretching!

I jest (only a little mind).
I went from being your average inflexible reprobate to being able to do the splits and all that high kicking shit back when I studied Lau-Gar Kung fu for 5 years or so, essentially useless in competition or an actual fight... but hey it looks good when showboating to your mates eh?
Thankfully the flexibility has stayed with me since I have managed to retain most of it being fairly active in general.
To give you an idea of my flexibility, I am 6 ft 2 and just under 16 stone, but can do the splits (used to be normal and box splits, but seem to be a few inches off of box splits these days as this is the hardest one to build up to), and I have excellent ham string flexibility, I can pretty much touch my head to my feet.
The one thing that I found that worked for me really well was not so much the types of stretches I did, but the regularity and the amount of time which I held the stretches for, I went from old inflexible me to bendy high kicking me in the space of six months, BUT.....I did have to stretch 5 times a week for about an hour or so to achieve this.
From what I have seen the one thing that holds people back is not being able to relax into highly uncomfortable deep stretches for long periods of time, most stretches are pointless if you only hold them for a few seconds!

First things first, you need to get a decent warm up, 10-15 minutes focusing on the area you want to stretch, so maybe running/burpees and star jumps in this case, I used to use them a lot, since they can be done anywhere, I know you may laugh at star jumps, but they are great for warming up the muscles around the hips and groin!

Secondly you want to combine dynamic and static stretches, ideally you want to spend around 5 minutes per stretch on the area you are working on, and lots of individual  leg stretches are important to address flexibility imbalances.
I would start with 1 minute of dynamic stretching, with a very slight bounce at the end of the stretch, however keep control of your bodyweight, if you just allow yourself to drop into the stretch this may well result in an injury, 3 minutes of static stretching holding yourself at the point of discomfort and trying to lower/stretch yourself further, then a further 1 minute of dynamic stretching afterwards to get the blood pumping a little and to help shake it off.

Thirdly you want to address flexibility imbalances wherever possible, if you notice your hamstrings developing flexibility extremely quickly (which mine did but everbody is different), then you want to place a greater emphasis on your quadriceps and knee joint mobility, and also try to improve your abdomen and hip flexor flexibility at the same time, as poor flexibility in antagonistic muscle groups will hinder future gains in the muscle groups where you have already developed good flexibility.

Antagonistic and/or opposing muscle groups play a huge part in flexibility, for instance did you know a lot of people suffer from back and neck ache from excessive tension/a lack of flexibility in the abdominal and hip area, this causes their posture to go to shit and really messes with your joints, not just your neck and back.

Anyway I hope thats helpful, any questions feel free, and if you're London based at all i'll hopefully be down The Arch twice a week from now on if ever you want someone to guide you through it all, or you just want to laugh at the weird big bloke who can do the splits 

[cofe]

thanks for that. quite prepared to put the time in, 5 days a week or whatever. can you give me an idea of kinds of stretches etc, and how the dynamic/static element might work?

ta.

[JamesD]

Love the first 3 on here for my hamstrings.

Edit - Says for tight hams. Sorry. Regular hams do the same just go that little bit further. So in stretch1 attempt to reach your toes and wrap a couple of fingers around your big toes. Gently pull your foot towards your body. Stretch2 ditto. Stretch3 I'd be tempted to keep my back straight in a waiter style bow but that is a probably a personal preference of mine.

I would steer clear of the crappy cross legged one, that is a stupid idea as it will put un-needed stress on the knee joint, and it only works so well because too many people are lazy enough to not lock their legs using a bit of effort when stretching their hamstrings.
Keep your legs as straight as possible to avoid cheating yourself out of stretching your hamstrings properly, and bear in mind that if you curl your back you will place the emphasis on most of your hamstring up until the glute insertion point, and if you straighten your back you will place a greater emphasis on stretching the glutes and the area of your hamstring close to your glutes, so its good to mix it up a little.

[JamesD]

thanks for that. quite prepared to put the time in, 5 days a week or whatever. can you give me an idea of kinds of stretches etc, and how the dynamic/static element might work?

ta.

Ok so i'll start with the Hips/abdomen area, the first one is one of my favourite stretches, a classic yoga position
(I highly recommend Yoga btw if you are really serious about improving your joint mobility and flexibility), and the last one is actually very useful for improving leg strength from the low squatted position (quite common in bouldering), I aim to get my bum touching my ankle in this stretch wherever possible, and holding, then moving dynamically from side to side whilst keeping my feet on the floor.







Now quadriceps and hamstrings:

Quads are pretty simple/easy to do

This one



and the equivalent on the floor:



I prefer laying on the leg to give me more leverage over it by allowing me to apply a lot of bodyweight if necessary to stretch the muscle.

Hamstring stretches:



you can do it standing as well but I tend not to bother, as it is easier to keep your legs straight seated, and almost too easy to cheat standing.

This one is great if you have a partner with you to hold your non-elevated leg down and to apply force to your elevated leg:



If you do not have a partner available, then this is a good substitute, and you increase the distance between your legs to engage the hips more:



I really like the 2 leg seated stretch with your legs pushed out as wide as you can get them as well, I then like to stretch to each leg individually, and then to the centre also, thats pretty much all I ever did for hamstring work, calves are pretty straight forward so i'm sure you don't need my help with those, and then this stretch for the groin area is pretty much the best one you can do:



Will try and get some more stuff up later, I hope that lot should be enough to get you started

[cofe]

good stuff - thanks for that!

[JamesD]

thanks for that. quite prepared to put the time in, 5 days a week or whatever. can you give me an idea of kinds of stretches etc, and how the dynamic/static element might work?

ta.

In terms of dynamic stretching it really is as simple as it sounds, its literally just moving into and out of the stretch position, to relieve yourself from the stretch and then re-apply it, several times, ideally attempting to move deeper into the stretch everytime you move back into the stretch.
Then static stretching is just stationary stretching holding yourself in the same position, although obviously push deeper with the stretch if you feel you can, static doesn't mean statue like in this case!

I talked about intervals between static/dynamic stretches in the first lengthy post I put up

[Johnny Brown]

its literally just moving into and out of the stretch position, to relieve yourself from the stretch and then re-apply it, several times, ideally attempting to move deeper into the stretch everytime you move back into the stretch.

The way we do it in yoga is usually 4 variations on each pose, each time getting a bit deeper. Hold each variation for 5 long breaths, trying to deepen the stretch on the out-breath, then straighten out, breathe in and out, then back into the next variation.

[JamesD]

Yoga is great, it is very good at maintaining joint mobility, improving flexibility over a long period of time, and a half-decent workout in its own right.
Obviously in an ideal world the best combination would be to do some Yoga alongside all of this stuff to, I think Yoga is great and I can't recommend it enough.
But from personal experience (although my yoga experience is only a couple of months now), the methods I stated before will help you make faster gains in flexibility if held for the time periods stated, and done as specified, since that is the sole aim of the stretches used within the methods I talked about.
Yoga is great, but more geared towards improving fitness, joint mobility, overall health, breathing, posture etc etc, good flexibility is more a pleasant side effect of Yoga....rather than the sole aim, in my humble opinion.

[JamesD]

Oh yeah here's one more (also used in Yoga), great to help with hip and spine flexibility, also depending on how strong you are can help work your triceps/forerarms a little, best not to try it until you have reasonably flexible hips though as otherwise it will force you into an awkward position if you can't push your hips out enough:

[OffshoreAndy]

Thought I would drag this thread back into the light. Some good advice  but has anyone got any good stretches and strengthening exercises to help with deep drop knees both to get the foot in position and strengthening to stop my knee going pop.
Cheers

[Muenchener]

Google "shin box switch" - there are plenty of good videos, e.g. and , so I won't both trying to describe it in words. It's good in that it works moving the hip into inward rotation, as per drop knees, which not many other commonly practiced stretches do.

Pay attention to keeping the back straight & upward, and spend some time just sitting in the position, not "switching", until you can keep both buttocks on the floor.

[mrjonathanr]

Stretching's good but be aware that you can cause damage if done too agressively. I wouldn't bother with anything dynamic. The thicker the tendon (eg ham) the longer the stretch will need to be held to have lasting effect on its length.
http://www.exrx.net/ExInfo/Stretching.html
and
http://www.thestretchinghandbook.com/archives/pnf-stretching.php
..may ive some ideas.
PNF refers to the phenomenon that a muscle's nerves will register a lengthening and initially cause a contraction to inhibit this to prevent possible damage. By then forcing a resisted contraction this reflex is inhibited and the muscle can then be stretched further.

[rodma]

I perform a sort of rolling leg stretch, which involves starting in  a deepish lunge, then rotate slowly until you are lunged in the other direction (torso stays level during the transition) and then repeat. I then rotate even further beyond lunge (can be dodgy if you have bad knees) until i am sat cross leggeded on the floor, before untwisting back up to lunge and then the rotating the other way again. I have found this makes a massive difference to my levels of hip, hamstring and quad mobility/flexibility. I was shown these stretches by a physio, who told me take it really easy with them, because it is both pretty easy to loosen things of too much and puts strain on knees.

I couldn't perform these stretches for about a year after tearing my collateral ligament in my knee (drinking injury, before anyone speculates that it's from stretching).

[Falling Down]

I stretched a lot and never made much progress other than preventing stiffness.  When I started Overhead Squats my flexibility improved dramatically, really dramatically.  Wall squats too.  Didn't realise how much spinal and shoulder flexibility also influences hips and legs.

[rodma]

 

overhead squats, even with no weight so long as you go all the way down, keeping shins vertical are amazing

[OffshoreAndy]

cheers for the replies. will give the overhead squats ago - they seem ideal.

[Muenchener]

Oops, yeah, very good idea. My subconscious "forgot" to think of overhead squats because I am extremely bad at them due an overly tight upper back.