Flexibility: Keeping What You Earned

Posted by EasyFlexibility Team on Apr 12, 2017

A large part of EasyFlexibility is keeping what you earned. Nothing is more frustrating than to go through a warm up and stretching session and see results, only to start from square one next time. For this reason we focus on retention of flexibility, just as much as its development.

Instructors taking EF certifications often come across two (at first glance) similar looking concepts. Both of them are part of retention side. Some of those techniques can be:

Movement and Habituation
Strength

Real quick for newbies

To retain the flexibility one has developed as the result of Zaichik Stretching techniques, we can use either Strength or Movement exercises in the newly developed ranges.

Strength Exercises are divided into 3 parts

Extended Length Conditioning: Same muscle groups as were stretched Antagonist Short Length Conditioning: Opposite muscles to the ones stretched Peripheral Conditioning: Not agonists and not antagonists

Movement and Habituation Techniques on the other hand are more flexible and don't have to focus on a specific group of muscles, but they can.

Cossack Squats

The gray area between the two techniques is the topic of today's article. An example that I use is Cossack Squats.

Performed with body only or with additional resistance they are strength exercises.
Performed without much resistance and for many repetitions they can become movement exercises.

While they don't look like any specific split, they do develop the joint position and muscles used in a Side Split.

To remove the resistance, the movement is performed laterally, without coming up. At the same time holding on to an object allows the arm to take some pressure and lighten the load of the lower body.