About Flexibility Test

Some people are fast runners; some people are good singers; some people are flexible —and some people aren’t. But when it comes to flexibility, it’s really a question of degrees. While it’s important to have a healthy range of motion in all your muscles and joints just to live a balanced, healthy, injury-free life, being superflexible is really only necessary if you’re a professional dancer or gymnast (so don’t get discouraged if you can’t put your foot behind your head!). This chapter is designed to help you determine how flexible you really are and which areas of your body need the most attention so you can become as flexible as can be.

Before you can set a reasonable goal, you need to understand what’s achievable and what isn’t. Everyone can’t get a job with the Cirque du Soleil or do the splits, but not everyone should for the simple reason that not every body is designed to bend that way. Several factors determine your flexibility, and you can change some of those factors and some you can’t. But before you can work on making improvements in your flexible status, you have to be realistic. In the following sections, I present several areas of the body that you can improve on. Take a look at the factors in each category to see what differences you can make in your body with flexibility. And then check out the things that you can’t change.