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While having the strength to support yourself in extreme ranges of motion is a major part of flexibility, a muscle's level of tonic contraction is the biggest l

While having the strength to support yourself in extreme ranges of motion is a major part of flexibility, a muscle's level of tonic contraction is the biggest limit on most people's flexibility. Static stretching does reduce tonic contraction temporarily and to a small degree, but it is not very effective at this. The best way to reduce a muscle's tonic contraction is through compressive techniques, such as body tempering and variants of myofacial release. A combination of stretching and compression actually works best of all (this is similar to the active release therapeutic modality). As an anecdote, doing an hour of yoga every day for three months didn't do that much for my hip and shoulder mobility, but an hour of body tempering by rolling on a PVC pipe while watching TV (while doing absolutely no stretching at all) produced massive improvement.

Ixiaus 10y ago
Depends on the type of yoga too, I imagine. I've been rolling out my hip and practicing Bikram's yoga for a while with excellent results. One of the features of Bikram's is the number of "compression postures" but not sure if that's the same thing as what you're talking about... Also for my hip (minor labrum tear).
kenjackson 10y ago
Do you have any links you'd recommend on how to do what you did?
- CuriouslyC 10y ago
  Take a look at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qq1z3usHseU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qq1z3usHseU Those PVC pipes are ~$8 at your local home improvement store. I don't roll the way he does though. Instead, I try to move my body through various movements (squat, arms behind back/overhead, etc), and when I feel tightness or pulling sensations in the muscle I'll mark the spot. Then I place that spot on the roller, and just lean all my weight into it; I will roll around a tiny bit just to try and find the most tender spot, but once I find it, I hold still and press on it until it "lets go" and it no longer feels tender. Once I had been using a PVC pipe for a while, I started doing the same thing using the shaft of a barbell - with weights on the end, it works a lot like a foam roller. This really hurts, but the results are amazing. I really should make do a youtube video of this because almost all of the foam rolling/self myofascial release stuff on the internet is kind of bad. The barbell trick doesn't seem to be something people know about either.
  - DrScump 10y ago
    Why is the video called "foam rolling" if just plain PVC with no foam covering is used?

Ixiaus 10y ago

Depends on the type of yoga too, I imagine. I've been rolling out my hip and practicing Bikram's yoga for a while with excellent results. One of the features of Bikram's is the number of "compression postures" but not sure if that's the same thing as what you're talking about... Also for my hip (minor labrum tear).

kenjackson 10y ago

Do you have any links you'd recommend on how to do what you did?

CuriouslyC 10y ago
Take a look at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qq1z3usHseU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qq1z3usHseU Those PVC pipes are ~$8 at your local home improvement store. I don't roll the way he does though. Instead, I try to move my body through various movements (squat, arms behind back/overhead, etc), and when I feel tightness or pulling sensations in the muscle I'll mark the spot. Then I place that spot on the roller, and just lean all my weight into it; I will roll around a tiny bit just to try and find the most tender spot, but once I find it, I hold still and press on it until it "lets go" and it no longer feels tender. Once I had been using a PVC pipe for a while, I started doing the same thing using the shaft of a barbell - with weights on the end, it works a lot like a foam roller. This really hurts, but the results are amazing. I really should make do a youtube video of this because almost all of the foam rolling/self myofascial release stuff on the internet is kind of bad. The barbell trick doesn't seem to be something people know about either.
- DrScump 10y ago
  Why is the video called "foam rolling" if just plain PVC with no foam covering is used?