Leg Stretches - leg flexibility for the Inflexible!

Are you one of those people who has tried yoga and pilates to get flexible, and found you're so stiff you can't even get into the starting positions? Don't despair, you can get supple!

In fact, you may not even be as inflexible as you think - or at least, not where you think. For instance, if you can't touch your toes, you'll probably blame your hamstrings: but in fact they may be fine, and it's your back or glutes that are stopping you reaching the floor.

So, the secret is to stretch and lengthen each set of muscles separately.

When stretching your legs, stretch your calf muscles first, because they can be stretched easily in isolation, without the other leg muscles getting in the way.

Before you can stretch your hamstrings, you need to loosen up your back and glutes.

Sit cross-legged (as best you can manage), then reach forward over your legs. Drop your head and just relax in that position for at least 30 seconds – the longer the better. Sit up, swap your legs around so the other leg is in front, and repeat.

The biggest mistake most people make when stretching is to “cheat”. They don’t mean to cheat, they’re just attempting to copy the movement they can see, rather than the movement they’re told to do.

Let’s take the hamstring stretch below. You may not be able to get your leg as high as the woman demonstrating this exercise. If you’re like most people, you’ll react to this by bending your knee a little, which will enable you to lift the leg higher. But by doing that, you’ll make the exercise less effective!

Instead of reacting to what you can see like that, always listen carefully to what the instructor is telling you. In this video, the instructor tells you the knee must be locked (i.e. straight). So that’s the important thing to focus on, far more important than lifting your leg high.

So what you should do is accept you can’t get your leg as high – only lift it as much as you can without bending your knee. (by the way, when you’re doing standing exercises, locked knees are generally not a good thing – in this exercise it’s fine, because you’re the leg isn’t bearing any weight).

You’ll often see this hamstring stretch done without a towel, using your hands to hold the leg or the foot. I strongly recommend using the towel, because it means you can relax your upper body, and you’ll be less tempted to twist yourself out of shape to reach your leg.

Do these stretches as often as you can. There is no fast track to flexibility – just dedication and persistence!

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All text copyright Marisa Wright. Photo courtesy of Lolo Drake on Flickr.