I’m 55 and 6’3" and have been pretty inflexible my whole life. I get about 6 inches from the floor with a forward bend. For the past month I have been focussing on stretching. I do about 15 to 25 minutes a day about 5 days a week.
With effort (more if needed), can I become a human pretzel? Am I too old to make significant progress? What is the limitation that might prevent me from progressing?
Your height may be a limiting factor; most gymnasts and dancers are short. And I suspect your age may be limiting as well.
I’m 18 years older than you. I have no problem bending over; the problem is getting back up.
You are probably not too old to get more flexible. Try Pilates.
Probably no one in moderate health is incapable of becoming more flexible with practice. Yoga is mostly about increasing flexibility – Pilates seems to focus more on core strength and balancing your sides; it’s why many equestrians do Pilates, as it is directed at the muscle groups riders use most. I’d do yoga – and be diligent about practicing. A lifetime of stiffness isn’t going to go away immediately.
What? There’s no point?
Why not?
I don’t have a problem with core strength. I just want to be more flexible. When I do my 20 minute stretch, I feel so much better but I my flexibility has only increased a small amount. I want more.
What kind of stretching are you doing?
I do a full body stretch from a stretching app. It takes me about 25 minutes and includes about 25 different stretches.
I’m not sure that height is a big factor, I’m 6’4" and +250lb. I’ve only ever done low level weekend warrior type athletics but always made point to seriously stretch. At peak flexibility I could easily put my palms flat on the floor with my feet together and knees locked. It’s really is just a matter of practicing.
I’m a similar age to the OP and after repeated minor injuries and increasing recovery times, I curtailed a lot of my activities few years ago (I now mostly cycle). I became concerned about my inflexibility when I noticed how I dreaded picking things up off the floor.
I started doing Yoga once a week in January and it’s made a massive difference already. TBH I find the classes torture, but I feel great the next day. I can’t comment on the difference between pilates and yoga, but for flexibility yoga is amazing.
My strong recommendation is to learn how to do stretches properly. There’s a lot more to stretching and flexibility than just touching your toes. A small difference in your posture completely changes what you’re stretching and the results. There is a side stretch in my Yoga class where if I cock my hip very slightly I can touch the floor (I was so proud of myself!), but the instructor corrected me and with my hips properly aligned to my body, I lose about 12" of stretch. My goal now is to touch the floor.
I’d suggest you sign up for an intro Yoga class, (I do mine at our local community centre for $5 per class), or consider paying a personal trainer or yoga instructor for one or two private classes to show you proper technique. A good instructor will fine tune your posture and make sure your doing the stretches correctly.
When I started running, about 9 years ago, in my mid 40s, I developed knee pain. After consulting with a sports medicine doctor, I discovered that I have particularly tight muscles and tendons, and the knee pain was patellar tendinitis. She instructed me to religiously stretch my legs every day. I definitely saw progress in my overall flexibility (and the knee pain went away), but it truly did take many months of daily stretching to get to that point.
I injured my back, along with several other parts, when I was pretty much doing nothing but running a few years ago. I hate to estimate how far I could reach in a forward bend back then, but it was probably somewhere just below my knees. To give you an idea of how bad it was, I hurt my back the first time putting on underwear standing up, and the second time, tying my shoes. The back of my legs were tight as hell, and it transferred all of the stress to my lower back.
I took some time off and then tried yoga for a while. Helped immensely. I can’t say it was yoga itself the helped, it was probably more just going through ranges of motion with a great teacher.
I haven’t yoga’ed for a while now, but while I’m not sure I can touch my toes, doing things like bending straight over to pick the shampoo bottle off the floor of the shower is no longer an issue.
I would echo GMANCANADA’s sentiment, and say that you’re unlikely to help yourself much with an app, and more likely to get hurt. Yoga is great, but try a few different places. I discovered that I had trouble finding a good one. I was fortunate that my teacher I liked had a physiology background, and actually understood how the body works. She’d intervene and take you out of something when she could see it wasn’t working and was going to hurt. I have also been to yoga classes where the person leading the class thought it was supposed to be a boot camp, and one (I didn’t go back) where she was looking at her notes the whole time. Not a good sign. I actually did hurt myself a bit in that class because I just went along.
In short, app=probably not good. Working with someone who knows what they’re doing=probably better.
Why exactly have you set improved flexibility as a goal right now?
Has you relative lack of flexibility on forward bend impeded your function or caused you discomfort in any way?
Overall stretching is over rated.
Another article puts it plainly:
And a reviewof whether or not there actually is evidence to recommend it as one of the modes we should focus on as we age -
The big three - aerobic, strengthening, and balance - can incorporate dynamic stretching in them as a matter of course. Your 25 minutes is likely spent better focusing on them.
As to the specific questions of the op - you can improve your range of motion (ROM) some but you will never develop the elasticity that some are just born with. That’s mostly genetic. And not always a good thing - the extra flexible (hypermobile) are often more, not less, prone to injuries. Someone like GMANCANADA, who had been flexible in the past and has gotten stiff with lack of exercise, is very different than someone like you who has never been stretchy at all. Again, you can for sure get more ROM compared to your current baseline … what’s “significant” is a matter of judgement. But you are limited by your genetics more than by your age.
I used to be very flexible back in my martial arts days. I could do the splits, touch my knees with my forehead stretching forward, kick well above my head, etc. It took me about a year of daily stretching to get that far in my early 20’s.
I’ve recently tried to improve my physical fitness by getting back into karate, and of course all that flexibility is gone, I’m in my mid-50’s now, and I can tell that things just aren’t as ‘stretchy’ as they used to be. When I was pushing the limits in my 20’s I could feel things stretching as I put strain on them. Now, it seems like I go from nothing being stretched to sharp pain if I try to stretch as much as I used to. So now I have to do it in smaller increments with less force, and it just takes a lot longer.
So yes, you can become more flexible when you are older, but it isn’t going to be as easy as it was when you were 20. And I think becoming a human pretzel at that age isn’t going to happen.
Good advice. Thanks.
I have focussed on stretching because some of friends struggle to put on socks etc and I don’t want to be in that boat anytime soon.
I have a good general fitness routine otherwise. I am not overweight and my strength is good.
I have tried yoga but I can’t go to a class everyday and I wondered “Is there an app for that”? And there is.
I couldn’t believe how good it made me feel to stretch for 20 minutes. I was just wondering, from a scientific perspective, if there are limits to my flexibility at this age.
Are you asking if you’ll be as flexible as you could have been when you were in your teens? Likely not. Can you markedly improve what you can do? Definitely. If it’s available to you I would strongly recommend Tai Chi Ch’uan (Taoist Tai Chi) as I was in the same boat as you and after three straight months of practice I could lay my palms flat on the floor with my knees locked, something I never could do even at 18. It has pretty much all the same benefits of yoga but isn’t clouded by the hype quite as badly.
I was fairly flexible in my youth, but decades of a sedentary lifestyle have left me fairly stiff. In the last few years I have been doing yoga once or twice a week. I have been lucky to find good teachers. As a result, my flexibility has increased somewhat, but there still is a lot of room for improvement. As for whether it is worth it, I was getting to the point where it was a challenge to put on socks, or get something off a high shelf. And I’m not that old.
In my experience, I need to do at least two hours of yoga class a week to continue to improve. YMM hopefully V
One thing my personal trainer said was not to stretch to warm up. Warm up first, 5-10 minutes on a treadmill, rowing machine, running in place, jumping rope. Then stretch. Your muscles will be warm and your stretching will be more efficient.
Generally, difficulty in putting on socks and shoes is an issue for those that are overweight. It doesn’t take much flexibility to bend one’s knees and put on socks…but if you have a gut in the way…
For me at least, it’s not an issue of weight. I am normal weight (BMI 23 or so), I just don’t bend well. It sucks really.
You say you’ve had issues putting on socks and getting things off of a high shelf. Was this due to joint issues, muscle inflexibility or something else?
Getting something off of a high shelf involves little more than raising an arm overhead and performing a calf raise. Not being able to is more apt to be an issue with joints, rotator cuff muscles (damage or impingement) or coordination than it is muscle inflexibility.
Aside from carrying extra weight in the midsection, that’s the same with putting on socks. If one can bend to at least 45° at the knee and flex at the pelvis, hips and spine a bit, putting on socks should be easy. Not being able to due to “stiffness” is usually due to joint issues (knees, hips and pelvis, spine, ankles) or pain (e.g., lower back pain) rather than muscle flexibility as the muscle don’t need to stretch beyond even what relatively sedentary people can handle.