Tag Archives: flexibility

Beyond the big stretch

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For a long time I’ve had flexibility issues. Part of it is that I just don’t stretch enough. I’m trying to change that. The thing is, I find stretching very unpleasant. In my mind stretching is closer to pain than discomfort. I think this perspective came from trying to speed up stretching just to get it over with. So instead of slowly pushing to get a better stretch, I just jump to the max I can go and wonder why it’s so uncomfortable.

Then I wonder why I don’t like to stretch.

There’s a metaphor here around getting out of my comfort zone. I see it in things I don’t want to do. At first I might avoid the thing I’m not looking forward to, then once I decide to do it, I’m all in. I go from no stretch to big stretch.

But for physical stretches this is a lousy strategy. The reality is that my body needs time to warm up. I usually do cardio before stretching so that helps, but I’ve got to start changing both my approach and my attitude towards stretching. It’s not about getting to an end point quickly, it’s not just about going all-in. Rather the big stretch comes from countless little stretches. Repeating movements ever so incrementally further.

It sounds simple, but my frame of reference needs to change. My focus needs to be in putting in the time, varying what I do to get the most out of movements, rather than trying to muscle through my stretches. Essentially I have to sit in a place where I’m more comfortable being out of my comfort zone, rather than jumping out of it briefly and in full force. The big stretch isn’t the point, the act of stretching is.

Ability and Agility

I love this quote, shared in a video on LinkedIn:

“It used to be about ability. And now, in a changing world, I think what we should be looking for is agility. I want to know how quickly do you change your mind? How fast are you to admit you’re wrong? Because what that means is you’re not just going to be reacting to a pandemic or to AI, you’re actually going to be anticipating those problems and seeing around corners, and then leading change as opposed to being a victim of it.” ~Adam Grant

It’s more than just anticipating problems, it’s about being agile, understanding challenges, and addressing them while they are small. It’s about understanding your strengths, and the strengths of your team… as well as weaknesses.

It’s about Agile Ability, which is why I titled this ‘Ability AND Agility’, rather than ‘Ability VERSUS Agility’. We need to embrace our failures and learn from them, recognize problems early, even predict them and be preemptive. This is so different than a culture of accountability and blame.

The desired student, employee, partner, colleague of the future will learn what they need to on the job. They’ll be exceptional because of their agility and willingness to learn, not just because of what they came to the table already knowing.

Complaint driven change

Change is good. We learn, we grow, we adapt, we change. Change is essential, and I like to think of myself as a change agent.

But change isn’t always easy. And the adoption of change is never distributed evenly nor does it affect people equitably. In many cases, when change happens it upsets people who are not ready for change… and that invites complaints.

Squeaky wheels start to squeak.

Something we need to be careful about is that change is happening for the right reasons. This can be hard because no matter what you do, the people most resistant to change are often the loudest. So you are doing things one way and it isn’t efficient or effective, and people complain. You change to a new way that works better. Now, there are happy people (quietly) enjoying the new approach, but a new group are unhappy. That new unhappy group might not be big, and they might not like the new system only because they liked the old way… but they are the loudest group.

This group might be the most vocal, they might make the most complaints, but they shouldn’t be the reason not to move forward, or to quickly change again, before seeing the positive aspects that the new changes have created.

There will always be squeaky wheels. There will always be naysayers and complainers. It’s important to empathize and support these people. It’s also important to learn from these people, but they should not be the drivers of change. A small but loud group should not be allowed to slow down or alter change just because they are the loudest.

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Afterthought: I wish news media thought about this… news today is about attracting eyes and clicks, and the small squeaky groups get far too much attention.

Small gains

I’ve been doing some Physio stretches almost every day since I was given them to do in June. I have an Enya song I listen to twice, once for each leg, doing the same stretches. Then one more to do some lower back stretches and a couple rather painful roller stretches on my quads.

I’ve made some small but positive gains in my flexibility, and it occurred to me that I would never have noticed them if that was the goal. If that was the goal, I would have given up long before I saw the gains… they are too small and took too long to be realized.

I think that the mental shift from ‘I want to see benefits from this’ to ‘this is a good habit to have, and I want to be someone who commits to stretching as part of my health routine,” was a big part in getting me here.

I now stretch for 3 songs, 10 minutes, almost every single day. I probably won’t notice any new gains for a couple months, but if I continue this for a couple months I will indeed see gains. If I was doing it just for the gains, I probably wouldn’t make the commitment because the results are too slow and too small to give me the reward I would be seeking.

No, I’m just someone who values stretching daily. And hopefully I’ll have less back pain and back issues in the future… and some small positive gains along the way.

Stretching and flexibility

Right now, I’m sitting in an upright position on the floor, with my legs at about a 60° angle, my knees straight, and I’m trying to lean my body forward as I speak into my phone and doing voice to text for this post. I’m not very flexible and to do this I actually have to arch my back to keep me from falling backwards. For me flexibility in my hips and hamstrings has always been a major issue resulting in at the very least daily discomfort, and often pain in my lower back. And even though I know that stretching is extremely important, in my mind the discomfort of stretching sits on the pain continuum rather than on the discomfort continuum. I hate it. But at my age it’s a choice of doing it or losing even more flexibility and suffering more pain in my later years. So here I am, stretching the very muscles I hate to stretch, after warming up with some cardio on the treadmill for 20 minutes.

I was thinking about my distaste for physical stretching and flexibility and it made me wonder, where else in my life am I inflexible? Where else do I need to stretch? I can think of a few patterns in my communication that are ineffective. But I also think I’m blind to the areas I probably need to stretch more. Unlike my back pain that tells me I must physically stretch, the pain points in other areas of my life aren’t big enough to make me see them.

I think human nature makes us more likely to get defensive about our more inflexible areas of our personality, rather than openly seeing them as areas to stretch and grow. It hurts to admit our non-physical flaws, flaws we can’t see. But these flaws that we hide from ourselves, and get defensive about, are the flaws where we probably need to stretch ourselves the most.

What are the pain points that you experience? Are you stretching yourself in those areas?