I did it. 2015 Fitness Goal is crossed off the list.
For those of you that were following closely I was practically touching my toes in my 2016 year in review post. Its hard to believe I've been at this for over 2 years now but my drive to improve mobility and movement function has not waned at all. There is still such a tremendous upside to improving my mobility and movement and I guess it is going to take a while to undo all the damage from years of constant sitting. In my previous update I mentioned that progress had stalled and I was pulling out the big guns and employing professional help in the form of the Gymnastic Bodies program front split stretching series . I've been dutifully doing the 45 min once a week workout for just over 6 months now. I also ended up starting the other two stretch series (middle split and thoracic bridge) as well just to round out the whole package. If you think my front split mobility is terrible you should see my thoracic bridge. So the good news is I've started to move the needle again but boy if I wasn't measuring everything and taking pictures I might question if I have had made any progress at all. It took me a whole year to go that last 2 inches.
Argh its that time again. Its been another 6 months since I updated my progress on touching my toes and frankly its not going that well. Here is the progress graph, I have officially reached stall out speed.
If you missed them here are my previous posts on the subject
Although compared to the end of 2015 it doesn't look quite so depressing
We moved houses over the summer so a lot of bands, rollers and other various contraptions were packed away in boxes for a while. So I had been a little lax on continuing my exercises. To compound the problem the slow progress has blunted my enthusiasm for painful stretches. Because of the lack of equipment and the fact that our new house has a hardwood floors on the main floor I added some dynamic type stretching and movements that I could just whip out and do whenever.
Stiff Bear Crawl - basically keep your legs straight and try to crawl small steps at a time
What it looks like in action
It definitely seems like I'm not getting much bang for my buck on the random stretching and mobility work I'm currently doing. I don't really have a good plan or set rotation for improving my toe touch at this point. It currently consists of random sessions when I have some free time typically in the evenings. I'm still doing yoga once a week. That all worked up until this point, so starting this month that is about to change. I've signed up for an online gymnastics course . Its an online training program called Gymnastic Bodies setup by ex USA gymnastics coach Christopher Sommer. I've signed up for just the front split stretching series and it was $75. It is 45 mins once a week and I have to say its pretty brutal. As of this writing I've done it three times. I'm hoping this will kick start my progress again with a more structured approach. We will see....
My fitness goal for 2015 was touching my toes. Its been 3 months since my failed attempt to touch my toes at the end of 2015. However that does not mean I've given up on the goal. In the last 3 months I've added a number of things to try and facilitate my goal. I mentioned to my chiropractor my goal of touching my toes and he said I could try to work on the brain neural piece. Part of my pitiful flexibility could be my brain just not allowing me to stretch further.
They had me do a number of exercises, some with my eyes closed, eyes open, squeezing my legs together, a number of different things. We would then retest my toe touch to see if anything had an affect on the distance.
Eventually we found something that showed a marked improvement in my toe touch. Based on that I was given this exercise to do at home. You basically squeeze as hard as you can with your legs and pull with your arms for 10 seconds then release. Do this for 3 sets.
The first night I went a little ballistic with this exercise and did it on and off for an hour. Surprisingly I was able to touch my toes after all that. However 10 mins later the effects had worn off but there was definitely something going on.
Also based on the following article. I added a "banded pigeon" to the rotation of stretches I was doing. Well that's what I'm calling it, I know the pigeon from yoga and well this has a band involved. Check out the article it has some good suggestions in there. My hips have long been a serious area of tightness so it can't hurt either way.
So after another 3 months (15 total) of work here are the results.
Now Compare that to my previous results over 15 months.
Graphically here is my progress
So there you go, I think based on this I should in theory be able to touch my toes in about 3 months. If I do a ton of stretching and exercises I can now touch my toes so I guess you could say I reached my goal finally. Hopefully soon I will be able to touch with minimal warm up. Next up Van Damme chair splits.
To some my fitness goal for 2015 might seem to lack a certain degree of difficulty. However, there has never been a point in my life where I remember being able to touch my toes. I'm sure my parents could come up with a few stories of me touching my toes when I was a baby playing with weeble wobbles.
The last time I was close was when I was doing two a day practices in high school soccer. I remember towards the end of two a days I was just about able to clip my toe if I bent my toe towards me and really went for it. There was certainly no grabbing of the toe or holding a position where my finger was touching my toe. Now some 25 years later and lots of sitting and staring at a computer screen you can imagine how flexible I am. This is my starting point. A pretty ridiculous 10 inches from my toes.
I started doing a fitness goal each year in 2014. My goal for that year was running 3 miles in 21 mins. Admittedly I hadn't done any running for many years. I didn't achieve that goal as the best I managed was around 21:30. It gave me a new appreciation for my brother's running prowess, who is 3 1/2 years older and runs 6 miles in 36 mins. 2015 I really wanted to improve my mobility for a host of reasons. I had already started doing some foam rolling and tissue work with a lacrosse ball to fix my tight hamstring and my lower back pain on the advice of my chiropractor (if you need a good one in Indianapolis see Dr Scott at Summit Spine). I also needed more hip mobility to allow me to do a proper back squat without stressing my lower back. And finally I wanted to reduce my chance of injury playing indoor soccer. I'll probably do a whole post on mobility but my goal of touching my toes was just part of a general goal of increasing my mobility and flexibility.
The main protocol I used was based on this move skill post.
2 rounds of Leg Swings, 10x Side to side, 10x Front and back
25ft of Waiter’s Bow without rounding your back (this isn’t the stretch yet, you are just warming up!)
Now for the hard work. You are going to perform 2 full rounds of Band Hamstring Stretch.
Be sure to watch the full video. Each Round will consist of:
10 Straight Leg Kicks – Kick high as possible with your knee straight and then drive your leg to the ground working against the tension of the band.
10 Second Straight Leg Hold – Again knee locked out, you are going to be pulling your leg towards your head while simultaneously driving our heel back towards the ground. DON’T LET YOUR LEG WIN. The intention here is to work against the stretch.
20 Heel Drives – This is where things get spicy. You are going to attempt to drive your heel up and overhead while pulling the band towards your body. Pull hard! The idea is to momentarily hit a stretch that would otherwise be unbearable. You should always be able to lock your knee. If you can’t, back off just a bit.
10 Second Bent Leg Hold- Pull your knee Into your chest with the bottom of your foot facing up or slightly overhead. Choke up on the band to increase the tension and pull in hard towards your chest. Simultaneously try to push the bottom of your foot up and overhead. You should feel a deep stretch in your high hamstring.
10 Straight Leg Kicks- Repeat exactly like the first round, notice how much range of motion (ROM) you have gained.
I would do this mostly in the evenings, choosing to spend most of my evening tv time crawling around on the carpet and pulling my legs into uncomfortable banded stretches much to the bemusement of my wife.
About half way through the year I also added a few things from this nerd fitness blog post
I also started attending a weekly 60 min yoga session. Flexibility was the main reason for starting yoga but I found I really enjoyed the relaxation that yoga brings and the calmness I feel afterwards. I am admittedly one of the only men in the class and I was careful to wear the appropriate under garments as I didn't want to shock any middle aged women with my downward dog.
I also wanted a more balanced approach to working out instead of all weights and cardio with no focus on mobility.
As you can see this is an aggressive foam roller. And to be quite honest it is pretty painful to use at first. But I have to say after using it for a couple of weeks it does the trick and I'll be using it regularly to break up the muscle fascia. I went full bore on this thing every night from xmas to the end of the year in a last ditch effort to reach my goal.
So how did I get on? Well I unfortunately I didn't track my progress regularly which I'm regretting now because I would have loved to see how my progression tracked over time. I certainly feel like I hit a bit of wall as I got close to the end of the year. Here are my results on 12/31/2015. I measured the stretch after just a minimal warm up.
As you can see I'm still about 4 inches away. Until looking at the pictures and despite my wife telling me I was 3 inches away I was sure I was much closer. Still work to do.
Despite my failings I'll log this one into the memory banks as something I'd still like to do along with my 21 min 3 mile run. I will post quarterly updates of my progress through out the year.
So now its 2016 I need a new goal, any suggestions? It needs to be hard enough that there is a chance of failure. Here is what I'm considering
15 good form pull ups
1.75 x body weight back squat
2 Hand stand push ups
1 Muscle Up
