8 Tips To Get More Flexible, Even When You Think You Can't

You might think flexibility is fixed—either you're born with flexible limbs, or you're not. However, you can train your body to become more flexible; it just takes a little practice.

Most people assume that stretching—in a way that uses muscle to force other muscles to lengthen—leads to flexibility. It doesn’t! The old-fashioned approach of static stretching (holding still while pushing hard into a stretch) has been part of most athletic training regimes for decades.

What scientists and athletes now understand is that flexibility begins in your mind. If your mind thinks it needs to defend against injury (or against you!) it might do just that, bracing for impact and making you less flexible.

If your muscles are working hard to hold you up or keep you balanced while you're trying to open those hamstrings, your body can remain strained and inflexible. If things are going to open up, your brain needs to believe everything is safe and easygoing, so put yourself in a position where you'd be happy sitting and watching TV for a while.

If you hang out at the end of your range of motion, you can risk micro-tearing your connective tissue. Instead, focus on active stretching, or dynamic stretching, to become more flexible.

Let's use the modified runner's lunge example again, where you sit down with one heel tucked in, and one leg straight forward. Start by leaning back. Take a moment and get used to things here. Next try walking your hands to the right, and leaning into them, maybe even bringing a forearm down to the ground. Do the same thing on the left side.

It might not be obvious at first, but if you want more flexibility, focus more on your breath than on your muscles. Breathing can put your mind at ease and create the right conditions for your muscles to release tension.

Bending over backward to put your head in your behind isn't likely to help you with much!

The problem with visible goals is there's a whole lot of temptation to force our way into them, rather than finding our way there peacefully. We might reach the goal, but the outcome isn't so good or healthy.

Let's try this in the runner's lunge example again: Rather than just aiming to touch your toes, or get your head to your knee every time, forget the goal! There's so much more to you than just a pose, so many more directions you can take than just straight ahead.

Take a standing forward bend as an example. Rather than trying to get deeper and deeper into the bend, relax and move! Put a little bend in your knees, and sway gently side to side. If you're looking for more flexibility, the key is moving more. Widen your stance, so your body is more stable and ready to move.

Balance is a good thing. There’s nothing wrong with you if you can't touch your toes, for instance. It's always best to listen to your body—while becoming more flexible might be uncomfortable at times, nothing should ever be painful. Listen to your body's cues and only push it as far as it can handle, even if it's little by little.