Flexibility: Has martial arts ruined me?

Factual Questions
1

I was always a wiry kid and reasonably flexible. In my 20s I was doing a lot of martial arts. I was never “Van Damme doing the splits on chairs” fexible or anything, but I could almost do the full splits with just a light warm up.

So, prior to martial arts I was “flexible”. During martial arts I was “really flexible”. I took time off for an injury and since then I seem to be… “anti-flexible”.

What gives? I’ve been trying gentle stretching exercises, but I swear to Jebus, something does not feel right. Minor stretching is downright uncomfortable. It’s like I have developed some kind of “negative elasticity factor” in my muscle fiber. My girlfriend thinks it’s amusing that for someone so athletic, I can barely touch my toes.

I’d chalk it up to age, but some of my climbing buddies are older than me and they don’t have any issues stretching.

Did all those years of martial arts somehow damage my muscles? Do I need to eat differently or something?

2

:smack: I just realized I didn’t finish asking my question. :smack:

Does intense flexibility training damage muscle elasticity or lead to some other kind of “anti-flexibility” (for lack of a better term)?

Example/ If a dancer stops dancing will he/she have a lot more difficulty regaining that flexibility than if he/she never trained at all?

3

I always thought martial arts made you more flexible forever. By that I mean more flexible at an older age than you would have been without the training. I started training at 36 and at 55 can still almost do a split and I haven’t been training for 5 years.

just my 2 cents. but imagine how unflexible you would be without the martial arts.

4

This is my thought also, intuitively at least. I’ve always been flexible, when I did martial arts I practically had spaghetti legs. But after the time off, it’s almost as if my legs… I dunno… healed funny, or something. Like when someone is injured, heals, and then has a more limited range of motion.

(The injury requiring time off had nothing to with my legs).

5

I think it’s a comparative thing, from a totally non-expert opinion.

I discovered that my endurance, my balance, and my flexibility were utterly marvelous when I was in martial arts. When I had to stop taking classes I felt like a big ol’ lump sitting at home. I swear I could feel my muscles fusing together.

6

That’s sort of what it feels like, except that I’m still very, very active. My girlfirend is quite perplexed at the fact that for someone who is so active, my flexibility has gone to shit.

My injury healed a few years ago, and since then by endurance, balance, strength etc. are currently on par with when I was taking martial arts. Rock climbing requires a lot of flexibility and you’d think that with a daily stretching regimen my flexibility would be at least as good as it was before I started martial arts.

I’ve definitely never been this inflexbile. Before I ever set foot in a dojo I could still sit and lean forward until my chest was laying on my things. Now I can barely touch my toes.

Strange. It must just be me though. I figured if there was some repetitive stress thing that tooks its toll on muscles, then someone here would surely know about it.

7

I would venture to say that age is the major factor here. The older one gets, the harder and longer it is to gain flexibility.

I took Tang Soo Do in my youth up to age 13, then took a 25 year break . I started training again 4 years ago. It took me over a year to get back the flexibility I needed to feel comfortable to start training for my 2nd Dan testing. I’m now 38 and it is still a struggle at times to do some of the things I used to be able to do. I still can’t touch my nose to my knee on hurdle stretches, and my splits are still not nearly as low as I would like, but I can kick at face height on all of my kicking techniques