Calves flexibility test

Having tight calf muscles can affect not only your range of motion in your ankle but also your walking and running strides. If your calf muscles are tight and you can’t get full range of motion in your ankles with this test stretch, then this lack of motion may have a negative effect on your form, in your hip, during walking and running. This imbalance may eventually lead to chronic pain or injury to your knees, hips, or even lower back. Pay close attention to this area if you wear high heels all day. Stretching this area can help you keep your ankles, feet, and hips in balance.
To do this test stretch, follow these steps:

• Sit on the floor with your right leg straight out in front of you and your left leg bent so the bottom of your left foot rests against the inside thigh of your right leg.
• Wrap a towel or stretching strap around the ball of your right foot and gently pull your foot toward you so your toes move toward your knee. Also make sure to keep your back straight; don’t lean forward at your hip. Try to move only your ankle and foot.
• Make a note on your Flexibility Self-Evaluation Worksheet at what place on the clock your toes point.
• 1:00 is tight.
• 12:00 is a healthy range of motion.
• 11:00 is very flexible.
• Repeat this stretch with your left foot.

Buttocks Flexibility Test

To do this test stretch, follow these steps:

• Sit up tall in a chair with your back straight, your abdominals lifted, and your shoulders down.
• Place your left ankle on your right quad just above your knee and gently press your knee toward the floor with your left hand as you bend forward at the hip and tilt your pelvis back.
• Remember to keep your opposite hip on the seat of your chair and your back straight. Look out at the floor in front of you, not at your feet.
• Make a note at what place on the clock face your knee stops moving.
• 1:00 is tight.
• 2:00 is a healthy range of motion.
• 3:00 is very flexible.
• Repeat this stretch with your right leg.
• 11:00 is tight.
• 10:00 is a healthy range of motion.
• 9:00 is very flexible.

Groin Flexibility Test

Groin pulls are often related to improper stretching or tight adductors, and this test reflects your flexibility in your adductors (inner thigh muscles). This area is often tighter in men than in women because women usually have broader and shallower hips, which give them a potential for greater range of motion in this area.
To do this test stretch, follow these steps:

• Lie down on the floor with your legs straight out in front of you and your arms to your sides.
• Inhale and as you exhale move your legs out to the side as far as you comfortably can. Remember when you were little and you used to make snow angels? You move your legs out like you were making an angel but without moving your arms
• Make a note on your worksheet at what place on the clock your feet point.
• 7:00 and 5:00 are tight.
• 8:00 and 4:00 are healthy range of motion.
• 9:00 and 3:00 are very flexible.

Hamstrings flexibility test

To do this test stretch, you need a towel or stretching strap. For more information about what type of strap to use check out.Then follow these steps:

• Lie down on the floor with your legs straight out in front of you and your arms to your sides.
• Bring your right foot toward your chest and wrap a strap or towel around the arch of your foot.
• Inhale and as you exhale extend your right leg toward the ceiling. Try to keep your right leg as straight as possible and your hips on the floor. If it’s more comfortable for you, you can bend your left leg so that your foot is on the floor but it’s important to try to keep your right leg straight, even if it is not straight up to the ceiling. Remember, you are only evaluating your flexibility, so it’s okay if your leg does not go very high. Keep working at it and stretch regularly and you’ll soon see improvement.
• Make a note on your worksheet at what point your foot stops.
• 10:00 is tight.
• 12:00 is a healthy range of motion.
• 1:00 is very flexible.
• Repeat this stretch with your left leg and record those results on your worksheet, too.

Quadriceps flexibility test

This stretch tests the flexibility in your quadriceps (front of your thighs). Knowing where your tightness lies allows you to focus on stretches that improve your range of motion in this muscle group.
To stretch your quads, follow these steps:

• Stand up tall and place your left hand on a stable surface. Your surface can be a chair, wall, doorway, or fence — anything that’s sturdy and helps you keep your balance in the next steps.
• Inhale and lift your right foot behind you and grab hold of your ankle or the top of your foot with your right hand.
• Exhale and gently move your knee back, trying to line it up next to your left knee. Don’t force your heel to touch your right buttocks.
• Make a note on your Flexibility Self-Evaluation Worksheet at what place on the clock your knee points.
• 8:00 is very tight.
• 7:00 is tight.
• 6:00 is good flexibility.

• Repeat this stretch on your left side.

Trunk Flexibility Test #4: Standing back extension

You may have tight abdominals if this stretch is difficult. To do this test stretch, follow these steps:

• Stand up tall with your back straight, your abdominals lifted, and your shoulders down with your arms to your sides and your feet apart.
• Inhale and as you exhale move your shoulders back, lifting your chest and eyes toward the ceiling without compressing your lower back.
• Think of keeping your spine long. You can also put your hands on your lower back for support.
• Make a note on your worksheet at what point on the clock your head stops moving.
• Between 12:00 and 11:00 is tight.
• Between 11:00 and 10:00 is a healthy range of motion.
• Between 10:00 and 9:00 is very flexible.

Trunk Flexibility Test #3: Seated forward bend

A tight upper or lower back limits your range of motion. To do this test stretch, follow these steps:
1. Sit on a chair with your feet flat on the floor.

2. Inhale and as you exhale round forward a far as you comfortably can, bending at your hips.

3. Make a note at what place on the clock face the back of your head points to.
• 1:00 is tight.
• 2:00 is healthy range of motion.
• 3:00 is very flexible.

Trunk Flexibility Test #2: Standing side bend

To do this test stretch, follow these steps:
1. Stand with your feet hip-width apart and your back straight, abdominals lifted, and your shoulders down.

2. Place your right hand overhead and your left arm to your side.

3. Inhale and as you exhale bend to the left side, reaching the fingers on your left hand down the side of your leg
Try to keep your shoulders and hips facing the front, avoiding even the slightest rotation in the spine.

4. Make a note on the Flexibility Self-Evaluation Worksheet at what place on the clock face the top of your head points to.
• 1:00 is tight
• 2:00 is healthy range of motion
• 3:00 is very flexible

5. Repeat this stretch on your other side (to stretch the left side).
• 11:00 is tight
• 10:00 is healthy range of motion
• 9:00 is very flexible

Trunk Flexibility Test #1: Seated rotation

To do this test stretch, follow these steps:
1. Sit up tall in a chair with your back straight, your abdominals lifted, and your shoulders down.

2. Place your left arm on the outside of your right thigh and your right hand on the back seat of your chair.
This position helps you turn your upper body at the waist in the next step.

3. Inhale and as you exhale twist at your waist as if you were trying to look behind you.
Remember to keep both shoulders down and to look out in front of you, not at the floor.

4. Make a note on what place on the clock your chest faces.
• 1:00 is tight.
• 2:00 is a healthy range of motion.
• 3:00 is very flexible.

5. Repeat this stretch by rotating to your left side and record the results.
• 11:00 is tight.
• 10:00 is a healthy range of motion.
• 9:00 is very flexible.

Chest Flexibility Test

To test the flexibility of your chest, follow these steps:

• Stand up tall with your back straight, your abdominals lifted, your shoulders down, and your arms at your sides.
• Inhale and bring your arms straight out in front of you at chest height.
• Exhale and open your arms to the side (palms facing forward) as far as you can without arching your back.
• Keep your shoulder blades down and stable.
• Make a note on your worksheet at what place on the clock your hands point.
• • 10:00 and 2:00 are tight.
• • 9:00 and 3:00 are a healthy range of motion.
• • 8:00 and 4:00 are very flexible.

Shoulders Flexibility Test

This simple movement can tell you a lot about the range of motion in your shoulders. To do this test stretch, follow these steps:

• Stand up tall with your back straight, your abdominals lifted, your shoulders down, and your arms to your side.
• Inhale and as you exhale lift your right arm straight forward, moving it as far overhead as you can. Remember to keep your shoulders down and don’t let your back arch. Stop moving if you feel pain in your shoulder. Make a note on your Flexibility Self-Evaluation Worksheet at what place on the clock face your hand points.
• 10:00 is tight.
• 12:00 is a healthy range of motion.
• 1:00 is very flexible.
• Repeat this stretch with your left arm and mark your results on the worksheet.
• 2:00 is tight.
• 12:00 is a healthy range of motion.
• 11:00 is very flexible.

Neck flexibility test

The chin-to-chest neck stretch gives you an idea of how tight the muscles are in your neck.
To test the muscles in this area, stretch following the steps below:

1. Sit up tall in a chair with your back straight, arms at your sides, and your shoulders down. Don’t round your back forward.
2. Inhale and as you exhale drop your chin down toward your chest.
3. Make a note on your Flexibility Self-Evaluation Worksheet at what place on the clock face the top of your head points. Imagine that the clock face is centered on the outside of your shoulder.

• 1:00 is tight.
• 2:00 is a healthy range of motion.
• 3:00 is very flexible.

Putting Your Legs Where Your Head Is . . . Not: The Flexibility Self-Test

Performing a stretch that involves more than one muscle group makes it difficult to determine which muscle is tight or which ones cause limited range of motion. For example, you may have heard of the “sit and reach” test — where you sit on the floor with your legs straight out in front of you, and you bend forward while someone measures with a ruler how far you can reach toward your toes (you may have done this test in high school; it’s a popular test on Fitness Day).

Even though this test is common for flexibility, I’m not a big fan of it because it gives you very little information — it tells you if your muscles are tight or not, but it doesn’t tell you which muscles; is it your lower back, your hamstrings, or your calves that are tight? Who knows?

So my test is different. My stretch test isolates individual muscles to give you the most useful information possible to design your own customized stretching program. At first, the following sections of stretches may seem like a lot, but unfortunately there’s no such thing as just a few moves to determine flexibility.

After you completed the self-test, you know exactly what muscles in your body need the most attention. At that point, you can head to the chapter in this book that contains specific stretches for the areas you want to work and then choose the exercise(s) that feels most comfortable for your body.

Also, you may notice that most of the stretches test both the right and left sides of your body. It’s not uncommon to have one side more flexible than the other, which creates an imbalance, but it’s important to try to get both sides of your body equal in flexibility for symmetry, balance, and injury prevention, and this test helps you achieve that goal.

Before you start, I want to give you a few pointers:

• You get better results if you warm up before you attempt these tests. I recommend doing the same warm-up routine every time you do this stretch test — that way you get more consistent and accurate results.
• When you retest to check your progress, make sure that you always test in similar situations: time of day, amount of warm-up, workout schedule, and so on. As you perform the stretch, imagine a large clock around you with the center of the clock pinned to the axis of the stretch. For instance, when standing up and twisting, the clock would be on the ground, directly beneath the centerline of your body — the axis around which you are stretching. Midnight would be looking straight ahead. If you’re sitting on the ground leaning forward, the clock would be centered on your hip, the axis of your stretch. Midnight would be when you’re sitting up straight.
• Because this is only an assessment, not an attempt to increase your range of motion, don’t hold the stretches for an extended period of time. Just get into the correct position, inhale deeply and as you exhale make a note of your position as it corresponds to the hands on a clock.

Let the testing begin!

Testing Yourself Before (and While, and After) You Go Gumby-Like

The very best motivation to stick with an exercise program is seeing results, which is why I’ve developed the flexibility self-test I include in the next section. The test helps you accomplish two important goals:

• Indicates where you’re tight and where your imbalances may be so you know where to focus your stretching program: For example, by doing this self-test, you may discover that your quadriceps (muscles in the front of your thigh) are tight but you have a healthy range of motion in your hamstrings (muscles in the back of your thigh). Eventually this imbalance between these two opposing muscle groups may lead to an injury. Thanks to this self-test you now have the information to prevent that from happening by putting more time and effort into stretching your quadriceps and less on your hamstrings. Another common imbalance that leads to injury or postural problems is being tighter on one side of your body than the other. That’s why in this self-test you document your range of motion on both the right and left sides of your body. If you were to discover that your left shoulder has more range of motion than your right shoulder, you can put a little more time into stretching your right shoulder.
• Records and tracks your increases in flexibility over time: The only way to tell how far you’ve come is to know precisely where you started. And the only way to know how far you’ve gotten is to measure your progress regularly. Performing this self-test before you begin your flexibility training gives you a good idea of your initial flexibility level.

Measure yourself every six weeks to see how well you’re doing. And nothing breeds success like success. The more you find yourself improving, the more motivated you will be to keep up the good work!

Developing increased flexibility doesn’t happen overnight. You need to set realistic goals, and start with easy exercises before moving on to more advanced ones. Testing is for recording progress, not for competing. No two people are alike. Some people may see results more quickly and dramatically than others, but as long as you’re seeing improvement and enjoying yourself, you have a much better chance of making stretching a lifelong program.

The self-test takes about 20 minutes to complete, so make sure to have enough time to complete the test. As you test yourself more often and get more familiar with the stretches, the time will decrease. To get started, you need the following:

• Comfortable, loose fitting clothes
• Mat or carpeted floor — you need a space large enough to lie down comfortably
• Firm chair or exercise bench
• Stretching table or your bed
• Flexibility Evaluation Worksheet (included at the end of this chapter)
• Pen or pencil
• A towel or stretching strap

If you’re really dedicated to increasing your flexibility and you have made a commitment to stick with your stretching program, I suggest investing a few dollars and purchasing your own stretching strap — it will be well worth the money. Until then, just use a small bath towel or gym towel.

What you can’t change

To avoid any unrealistic expectations, remember that there are some physical factors that everyone has in common that simply can’t be changed. Yes, genetics do play a big part in individual flexibility, so I guess it’s okay to blame your family for this one . . . sorry mom!

• Your gender: Research indicates that, in general, women are more flexible than men. One reason could be because of bone structure because, for example, women usually have broader and shallower hips, which give them a potential for greater range of motion in the pelvic area.
• Your age: The aging process diminishes normal muscle function, including strength, endurance, and flexibility. Lost muscle mass is replaced with fat and collagen. Collagen is the main component in connective tissue and is highly inflexible. Although aging is, of course, inevitable, you can greatly slow down this process with your lifestyle choices, such as eating right, exercising, and stretching regularly!
• Elasticity of connective tissue in muscles or joints: Don’t think of flexibility in terms of your whole body; think in terms of the range of motion of each joint. And each of the joints in your body is made up of bones, muscles, and three types of connective tissue:
• Tendons: Tendons connect muscle to bone, and they drag the bone along when the muscle moves. Firm, strong tendons are a good thing because without them your muscles would be inefficient and unstable. You don’t focus on stretching the tendons in this book.
• Ligaments: Ligaments connect bone to bone (such as the bones in your knees and in your elbows) and play a large role in the stability of a joint and how much range of motion is possible in that joint. Because you don’t want wiggly knees or elbows, you don’t want to stretch your ligaments, either.
• Fascia: This tissue is the rest of the connective tissue in your body. You can find fascia under the skin, deep in your body surrounding your organs and within your muscles, holding the fibers of the muscle together in a compact, efficient bunch. As much as 30 percent of a muscle is fascia, but the precise percentage is determined solely by genetics, so the amount of fascia in your muscles can play a large role in how tight or flexible your muscles can be. If you were born with a high percentage of fascia in your muscles, chances are you will be less flexible overall.
• Your bone and joint structure limitations: You can thank Mom and Dad for your bone structure. Plain and simple, some people’s joints allow more range of motion than others. Get over it. Just like your childhood.

What you can change?

Flexibility is the ability of your body to move through the required range of motion to perform the activity at hand. But what happens if you don’t have flexibility in your body? You may be uncoordinated or tense, but here are some factors you can positively alter in your life to get the most out of your flexibility training:

• Muscle tension: If a muscle is tense or in a state of contraction then it can’t increase in flexibility. It’s important to be in a state of relaxation to get the full benefits of stretching _ Lack of coordination and body awareness: Lack of coordination can limit your ability to stretch the targeted muscle, therefore diminishing the effectiveness of the stretch. You have to pay attention to what’s happening to your muscles as you stretch and you have to be mindful of your movement, all the while continually improving your form.
• Lifestyle: Eat right, exercise regularly, and adhere to your flexibility training. Practice makes perfect, and that advice applies to becoming more flexible, too.
• Warming up: You need to make sure to warm up your muscles before you stretch. When a muscle and the connective tissue around that muscle are warm they stretch more easily and with less resistance — and you get more benefit from your stretching routines.
• Your attitude: You’ll never see your best results without a positive attitude. Of course that philosophy applies to more in life than just stretching, but focus on flexibility training for now.

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.