How I work on my flexibility

The other day, I read a blog post about yoga from a blogger who just started getting into it, and it got me thinking about my own experiences with flexibility training.

As a child, I was pretty bendy. I was able to do the splits fairly easily, BUT as I grew older and lazier, I started spending more time sitting in front the TV, and less time being physically active. It got the point where I couldn’t even touch my toes.

This is where yoga comes in…

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I was first introduced to yoga back in 2013, and it was an absolutely terrible experience. Back then, I was trying to follow the P90x workouts, which didn’t really end up working well for me, given how extremely difficult the program was. The P90x yoga video was about 92 minutes long! It was honestly pure torture getting through that entire routine. At the time, I couldn’t understand why so many people were going crazy over it.

It wasn’t until last year that I decided to give yoga another try. At the time, I had just started the P90x3 program. Not to be confused with the P90x videos, the P90x3 workout program is the 3rd instalment of the franchise, which is actually a lot easier than its predecessor. All of the workouts in P90x3 are only 30 minutes long, which made it a lot more convenient, and easier to complete.

That’s really when I started to appreciate yoga more. The 30 minute yoga video from P90x3 was more suited to my level of flexibility and strength. They run through the poses fairly quickly, which means your legs won’t be buckling from the stress of holding the poses for too long.

I guess the real moral of the story here is to not give up so easily, especially with new experiences. I have since learned that there are so many different types of yoga that you really should try several of them before you give up, and say that it’s just not for you.

A few months into the P90x3 program, I was finally able to touch my toes in a forward bend. Then, a few more months after that, I was able to rest my whole palm on the ground, slowly getting more flexible as time went on.

Around that time, I also started bouldering, which actually requires quite a bit of flexibility as you climb harder problems. That was when I decided to push my flexibility even further.

I’ve always wanted to be able to do splits again, so I looked up instructional videos on youtube, and I found this really great one ↓

After about two weeks of following the video, I was able to finally stick my splits! I still like to do this particular stretching routine once or twice a week just to make sure that I don’t lose my newfound flexibility 🙂 I highly recommend it to everyone!