Personal Training 8: Flexibility

This post is part of an ongoing series about my learning process as I train to become a personal trainer. In this section, I am looking at my course notes on the subject of flexibility. 

The course notes define flexibility as ”the range of motion at a given joint”.  I suppose that under this definition can therefore be used fairly interchangably with the word mobility, therefore.  I’m going to use mobility from now on because I can’t shake the Jane Fonda-esque connotations of flexibility.

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Six factors affecting mobility

My course notes identify several factors that influence the degree of mobility that you can find at a given joint:

1. Joint type – what type of joint you’re looking at dictates how mobile it is going to be.  For example, the shoulder and hip joints, being ball-and-socket joints, have much more latent flexibility than the elbow joint, which is a hinge joint.
2. Injury history – if a joint or the muscles or soft tissue surrounding or attached to a joint have been damaged in any way that there might be implications for its mobility.
3. Gender – it is supposed that women are more flexible than men, particularly at the hip joint.  I did some reading about this and found that the evidence is poor for showing this for all joints.  This interesting article, which is drawn from the book Science of Flexibility, by Michael Alter, discusses the reasons for the increased mobility at the hip joint and also covers the increased flexibility that occurs as a result of pregnancy.
4. Muscle length - where muscles are shortened, either because of postural problems, injury or knots, this can lead to a decrease in flexibility for a joint.
5. Age – most people seem to lose flexibility as they age.  Michael Alter notes that ”the primary factor responsible for the decline of flexibility with age is certain changes that occur in the connective tissues of the body.  Interestingly, it has been suggested that exercise can delay the loss of flexibility due to the aging process of dehydration.  This is based on the notion that stretching stimulates the production or retention of lubricants between the connective tissue fibers, thus preventing the formation of adhesions.”  Alter goes on to define these changes as: “(1) increased amounts of calcium deposits, adhesions, and cross-links in the body, (2) an increase in the level of fragmentation and dehydration, (3) changes in the chemical structure of the tissues, and (4) replacement of muscle fibers with fatty, collagenous fibers.”
6. Temperature – warming up a muscle increases its flexibility.  This premise is based on the idea that muscles are like rubber bands.  If they are cold, when you try and stretch them, they resist the movement and can snap.  If they are warm, however, they are very flexible and stretch a long way.

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Ways to improve mobility

There are a number of ways in which we can improve our mobility:

• Static stretching – my course notes seem to believe that the only option available to us to improve mobility is static stretching.  The notes provide details of a number of different static stretches, which I won’t reproduce here.
• Soft tissue work – I used to be a raving fan of soft tissue work to the exclusion of everything else.  I still believe that soft tissue work is brilliant for short-term relief and for making sure that any temporary muscle knots caused in training don’t build up into a lasting problem.  I do maintenance work every day I add extra bits in when I have a tight area that is causing irritation.  However, I have found that purely soft tissue work is short-sighted if not done in conjunction with an appreciation of muscular balance.
• Muscular balance – most of my mobility work these days is actually targeted strength training to counter the effects of sitting down all day.  I have found that the more muscular balance work that I do, the less I have trouble with my mobility.  My first exposure to muscular balance training came when I started reading T-Nation corrective exercise articles for various different pains or afflictions.  Consequently, I made some great progress with my own injury history.  However, once I started reading more, I realised that most of these corrective exercises were based on Vladimir Janda’s work on muscular imbalances and that I could have short-circuited most of my problems by listening to him.  Now, I feel that I am making the best progress by basing my muscular balance training on his perceptions.

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A brief introduction to Vladimir Janda

From my reading, I understand that Vladimir Janda was a Czech professor who excelled at the analysis of postural disorders.  There are a couple of key concepts that he introduced that are useful for understanding the effects of sitting on the body.  These tend to get referred to a lot on the internet by people who want to sound clever but they are rarely covered in much detail, except in quite technical articles.  They are:

• Tonic and phasic muscles – Janda identified two groups of muscles based on their roles.  He called them tonic and phasic.  Tonic (or postural) muscles are responsible for combined flexion, adduction, and internal rotation.   They are responsible for stability. On the other hand, phasic muscles are responsible for combined extension, abduction and external rotation and are responsible for movement.  Tonic muscles are prone to tightness, while phasic muscles are prone to weakness.
• Muscular imbalances – Janda identified two common muscular imbalance syndromes: Upper Crossed Syndrome and Lower Crossed Syndrome.  Upper Crossed Syndrome is characterized by tightness of the upper trapezius, levator scapulae and pectoralis muscles, along with weakness of the deep neck flexors, lower and middle trapezius, and serratus anterior.  Lower Crossed Syndrome is characterized by tightness of the erector spinae, rectus femoris and iliopsoas, along with weakness of the abdominals and the gluteal muscles.

For further reading about Vladimir Janda and his system, you may find it interesting to look at the following:

• DynamicChiropractic, which has an appreciation of Vladimir Janda’s life and work
• Advance Web has a technical discussion of Janda’s overall approach
• Human Kinetics, which covers the muscular imbalances of older adults
• Back Into It, which covers the basics of Upper Crossed Syndrome
• Back Into It, which covers the basics of Lower Crossed Syndrome
• Perform Better, which discuss the use of kettlebells in assisting the treatment of Lower Crossed Syndrome
• Charlie Weingroff, who makes it clear that there are four muscle groups and therefore four areas to conisder in treating Lower Crossed Syndrome: the (possibly weak) glutes and abs and the (possibly tight) quads and spinal errectors.  He also gives some useful tests and notes that you can never do enough glute activation work, which I tend to agree with from personal experience

And if anyone reading this happens to have some good books about Janda or has read about him extensively, would you mind creating a Wikipedia page in English, because there isn’t one yet and there should be.

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Learning from Vladimir Janda: Upper Crossed Syndrome

So having read about Vladimir Janda’s syndromes, which are based on the idenitification of weak muscles and tight muscles, I think that Upper Crossed Syndrome can be summarised very briefly as:

• Tight muscles - upper traps, levator scapulae, pecs
• Weak muscles - lower and middle traps and serratus anterior

So the targeted muscular balance routine that I have used to help me reduce these issues has been:

• Stretch and lengthen tight muscles - foam roll or self massage stick on upper traps, levator scapulae and pecs.  For more information about foam rolling or self-massage, see my post on what my soft tissue maintenance programme looks like.  It doesn’t always look exactly like that but it’s a fair reflection.
• Strengthen weak muscles – band pull-aparts (for lower and middle traps) and scapular push ups (for serratus anterior).  Here are a couple of videos to demonstrate these exercises, from some of my favourite online authors:

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Band pull aparts (with thanks to Charles Staley for the video)

This exercise was life changing for me 

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Scapular push ups (with thanks to Nick Tumminello for the video)

 This is like lubrication for my scapulae

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Learning from Vladimir Janda: Lower Crossed Syndrome

So having read about Vladimir Janda’s syndromes, which are based on the idenitification of weak muscles and tight muscles, I think that Lower Crossed Syndrome can be summarised as:

• Tight muscles - erector spinae, rectus femoris and iliopsoas
• Weak muscles -  abdominals and the gluteal muscles

So the targeted muscular balance routine that I have used to help reduce these issues for me has been:

• Stretch and lengthen tight muscles - foam roll or hockey ball on the spinal errectors (you have to be very careful here), quads and iliopsoas.  For more information about foam rolling or self-massage, see my post on what my soft tissue maintenance programme looks like.  It doesn’t always look exactly like that but it’s a fair reflection.
• Strengthen weak muscles - planks and ab-wheel roll-outs (for abs) and glute bridges (for glutes).  Here are a couple of videos to demonstrate these exercises, from a couple more of my favourite online authors:

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Ab wheel roll outs (with thanks to Eric Cressey for the video)

 Don’t try these unless your plank is absolutely solid as a rock

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Glute bridges (with thanks to Bret Contreras for the video)

The world’s most under-rated exercise

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As always, please note that this is just what has worked for me.  And I mean it has really made a huge difference both to my ability to lift and my ability to do just about anything I want without getting a sore back or shoulders, which is worth quite a lot to me.

And by no means am I an expert on the work of Vladimir Janda, it is just that his way of thinking has clarified my own approach to sorting out my posture and I wish that more people were aware of his great work.