Want to Get Flexible FAST? Avoid These 5 Mistakes

Do you want to get flexible fast? Well, today I'm going to break down the top 5 mistakes people are making that are stopping them from getting flexible. And before we start, my name is Sam and I'm a dancer with Shen Yun. So it kind of means that I stretch for a living and I've been doing it for more than 18 years. It doesn't mean that I'm super flexible and I'm some flexibility expert, but it does mean I made a whole bunch of mistakes on my way here and I'm going to share those with you guys today. Quick disclaimer before we start, all of this is my own personal experience. Everybody's body is different. So listen to your body and don't overstretch. Okay, let's get started. First tip. Okay, first, first, first, I got to get out of this position and then I'll tell you the first tip. But oh, guys, make sure you watch to the end because I have a bonus mistake that really held me back the most. Okay, let's get started. So the first mistake that most people make is they forget to relax. And it's kind of counterintuitive because usually when you're in pain, you tend to tighten up. But for stretching, when you're in pain, you have to relax. When I first started stretching, it used to look like I was getting hit every time they stretched me. I was like, oh, what ends up happening is obviously you can't get flexible like that because everything's tight. But two is that you actually are more prone to injury. You have to get in a good habit of breathing out every time you stretch. Actually a very cool technique is called the PNF stretching technique. And this takes relaxing to the next level. Before you stretch, tighten the opposite way and you hold it for a certain amount of time and then you relax. And you can go into usually a deeper stretch than you were doing before. And actually I have a secret visualization hack that I came up with that's going to help you relax even more. But I'll tell you guys about that later in the video. The second mistake that people usually make is they overstretch. What happens is people really want to get flexible fast and they do a crazy workout. And let's change the screen orientation so you can see me. So basically what happens is, and I know I look really ugly right now and I'm struggling to talk now. So basically what ends up happening is you really want to get flexible really fast and you overstretch. You end up getting injured. So you have to start from zero. I was one of the stiffer guys in my class. So I would stretch like crazy for one day. Like I'd be doing over splits, I'd be on the wall, I'd be doing leg holds and the next day I couldn't get out of bed. I would have to recover for a month before I could stretch properly again. So listen to your body. If you feel like something hurts or you can't get out of bed the next day, then don't do it. Stretching is a marathon. It's not a sprint. And the third mistake is warm up before you stretch. Now this sounds super obvious, but it's crazy how many people don't do it, including myself. So before, when I kind of got lazy sometimes, I would sleep as long as possible and come the last second right before dance class, which meant that I had to stretch really fast and really hard. And you can imagine how bad that was. I ended up pulling a lot of things I shouldn't have pulled and it made my flexibility journey a lot harder. And it's not just coming down early and doing some basic stretches. It's actually getting your blood flowing, which is really important with simple things. What I've been doing recently is I've been taking a hot shower before stretching and it's helped a lot. Sometimes I even stretch in the shower. Do any of you guys stretch in the shower? Is that kind of weird? If that's weird, leave it in the comments so I know that I'm weird. Anyways, if you guys are wondering what this stretch is, I'm stretching my point. When I use my toes, hopefully it looks good. Okay, next mistake. Mistake number four. Technique matters a lot. When I first started stretching, I was in a class with other dancers and all of them had their front splits already and I didn't. This is what I looked like. I was off the ground like this when I did my front splits. I felt like I was being left out or I felt different. So I really wanted to get my split. So I cheated by not using the proper technique. What I did was instead of being like this, I shifted my weight over to one side and I bent my knee more and from the front, it looked like I was down on my split. What ended up happening, and let me show you, if you look at the front, this is bad technique compared to the right technique which is this. I was actually stretching like this for the longest time. When I did things like kicking or leg holds, I was super stiff and I was wondering why am I not improving so fast and it was because of my technique. Always know what the proper way is to do the stretch, what you're stretching. If you really don't, the internet is amazing with lots of tips and techniques and also you can just leave a comment on this channel and I'll try to get back to you guys. Okay, next mistake. I think this is one of the most important ones. The final mistake, number five, is that people don't realize how mental stretching actually is. So before, I didn't like stretching because it was painful so I tried to use my phone or talk to somebody to distract myself while stretching. But I realized that my flexibility was improving very, very slowly and I adjusted something. I thought about where am I stretching, what am I trying to achieve and that's also where I came up with the new visualization secret I was telling you about earlier in the video. Imagine your muscles are like a hand and they're holding onto a ball really tightly. You have to relax different parts of that hand to let that ball go through. As you relax those parts, your hand slowly opens up until it fully relaxes and that ball falls down. I found this really helpful. I don't know, it sounds weird when I say it but it is helpful when you try to visualize the ball falling through and then finally you just go into your split. And this leads me to my final bonus mistake that I think was holding me back the most. It was me telling myself I was stiff. In the beginning, I was stiffer than most people and I always repeated to myself, you're stiff, you're stiff. I ended up having this notion that I was stiff. I think it actually made me stiffer. There's an interesting Harvard study where they took 84 of these cleaning maids in a hotel and they told half of them that you doing your everyday cleaning is super good exercise and they didn't tell the other half. The half that was told that they were doing some crazy exercise because house cleaning was a dynamic workout actually lost weight. And on the other hand, the ones that weren't told anything had no improvement. It really goes to show that your mind matters. So when I was telling myself I was stiff, I was stiff, I was actually making myself stiffer. Do not let your mind hold you back. Don't compare yourself to other people. Just compare yourself to yourself a week ago, a month ago. How much am I improving? Am I going down more in my split? And that's it. And actually that's it for this video. Those are my top five mistakes. Thank you guys for watching up until now. And if you have any other flexibility questions or videos you want me to do, leave it in the comments. Now I got to get ready for class. All that stretching is, oh, made me very sore.