My #1 Flexibility Tool

Hey, what’s up, guys? Dustin Williams here, from DustinWilliamsPerformance.com, and I wanted to show you one simple tool, one real easy trick that you can use, that’s going to immediately improve your flexibility. For those of you that have been following me for a little bit, you know that I’ve been training in applied neuroscience, functional neurology, whatever you want to call it, for the last six years or so, and there are ways that we can actually trick the brain to immediately give you more flexibility. It’s actually a pretty cool thing.

There’s two different types of focus. You’ve got an internal focus, and you’ve got an external focus. Whenever you focus internally, this is going to be more like what you would do if you were strength training. So, if we were doing a bicep curl, and you’re really focused on activating that muscle group, activating that bicep curl, or the bicep muscle specifically as you’re doing the curl, really trying to work on the biceps and really flexing it out, that’s an internal focus. You’re focused on the muscle, you’re focused on the joint, you’re focused on everything on the inside.
Then you’ve got something like external focus. So, one of the sports that I love is power lifting. Whenever I go in to do a power lifting meet, and I’m trying to lift a really heavy squat, I’m not focused on, “Okay, I need to move my hips and my knees at the same time, so that I’ve got good bone rhythm going on. I need to make sure that my spine’s really linked in.” I’m not focused on all the internal properties. I’m focused on the external property of just getting the squat done.

So, you’ve got two different types of focus, and a lot of times, whenever people are doing stretching exercises, and they’re trying to increase their flexibility, they’re focused more on the internal aspect, as compared to the external. The downside of that is, whenever you focus on something internal, think about back to that bicep again. If you’re focused on flexing that bicep, and you’re really internally focused on it, you’re focused on contracting the muscle. And whenever you want a muscle to open up, become more flexible, and stretch, you don’t want it to activate. You don’t want it to activate or contract, because that’s going to shorten it. It’s going to lower the amount of flexibility that you have. So, if we can focus externally, and we don’t activate the muscle, we’ll actually get immediate changes in range of motion, which is pretty cool.

So, I want to demo that. I’ve got Amber here to help me out a little bit. What we’re going to use for her is a shoulder range of motion. Now, this will apply to pretty much anything, so this isn’t just to increase your shoulder range of motion. If you need to focus on your hips, or if you’ve got elbow problems, or whatever areas you need to focus on, it will work for any of the above, but I’m just showing the shoulder as an example.

What I’m going to have Amber do here is, Amber, face towards me, and the first thing I want you to do is, I’m going to have you hold your arms straight out, okay? And I’m going to have you put your hand here on your chest, because I want to focus just on the shoulder range of motion. A lot of times, when I have people reach back, they end up rotating, and that’s what I don’t want you to do. So, your hand here is just a reminder of that.

Warm this up a little bit. Do several reps, and I want you to start to reach back as far as you can comfortably. You can see that she’s already got a pretty decent range of motion whenever she’s reaching back. I mean, I can’t even reach back that far on my own already. So, she’s already got a decent range of motion. She’s just warming it up, and right now, she’s doing an internal focus. She’s focused on reaching back, she’s focused on the musculature. This is what most people do when they’re just trying to reach back and stretch.

Okay, now that it’s warmed up, reach back as far as you can comfortably, and hold it. So right now, I want you to take a little bit of a mental focus, a little picture here about what her range of motion is, and I want you to take a look at it too, Amber, so you can see where you’re at. So that’s where she is. Go ahead and relax for a second.

What I’m going to do here is, I’m going to stand back behind her, and all I’m going to do is, Amber, the only thing I want you to do different is just, instead of reaching back, just touch my hand. So, reach your arm out, touch my hand. There you go. Okay, relax it. Do it again, touch my hand. Okay. Touch my hand. Okay. Touch my hand. One more time. Touch my hand. Now, hold that position. Okay, touch my hand. Now, take a look at your shoulder. You can see how much farther back you’re reaching at that point. And you can see also on the video that she’s got quite a bit more range of motion. You can go ahead and relax.

By focusing externally, by focusing on reaching back and touching my hand, not on how far can I stretch, but focused on doing something external, it allowed her to increase her range of motion immediately. Now, here’s the thing. As soon as she stops doing that, as soon as she stops focusing externally and goes back to focusing internally, her range of motion is going to go back to normal. So, what I want you to do now is just reach back again, just like you did normally, as far as you can comfortably. So, right here, she’s still reaching a little farther than she was, but not quite as far as she was when I was having her reach back and touch my hand.

What happens here is, once you get into that range of motion, so you focus externally and you’re able to get that range of motion, then immediately you need to train it. For an example here, what she might do is use some type of a resistance band. Once she’s in that position and she’s back here, she might be holding a resistance band, maybe doing some shoulder circles in this position, maybe at a high angle, maybe at a low angle; but what she’s trying to do now is, now that we’ve opened up the nervous system to feel comfortable in that range of motion, you now need to train it so that you can keep it. But immediately, you see the results that happen just by focusing externally versus internally, so if you start doing that whenever you’re doing your stretching routines, or if there are certain areas that are really tight and you need to focus on that, change it to external and then train it, and you’ll see some great changes in your flexibility and your mobility in a really, really short time.

So, you guys test it out, let me know how it goes. Give me some feedback, you can comment, let me know, but I’ll look forward to hearing from you.