I can't touch my toes

[JEDI]

i can barely touch my ankles.

What stretching excercises? How many times/week? How long each time?

(yeah, yeah, insert prison jokes here)

 

[disports]

That's further than I can go. The farthest I can reach is the middle of my shins with the end of my palms touching the bottom of my kneecaps. :X It's really sad.

 

[Red Squirrel]

glad I'm not the only one. I have at least a foot of clearance between the end of my fingers and my toes when I stretch the farthest. It does not hurt or anything, I just can't go further, period. I don't even think I stretch when I go at my furthest, it's just a dead stop.

 

[Howard]

Me neither, but that's because I pulled a muscle inside my left ham. Go stretch.

EDIT: Actually, I still can.

 

[brikis98]

Just google static or PNF hamstring stretches. Almost any one will do - in fact, trying to bend over and touch your toes counts. A few times a week, do a few sets of 15-45 seconds (work your way up) and you'll see improvement. Just be sure to be thoroughly warmed up first: for example, stretching at the end of a workout is ideal.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

When I did martial arts I could touch the floor with my wrists. Now, I can just touch my toes. Just doing a bunch of stretches 15 seconds each everyday did a lot for my flexibility.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Toe touches are considered to be a "risky" stretch for the untrained. You can hyper-extend your knees, and it puts a lot of pressure on your lower lumbar.

This guy wrote a nice paper on stretching, compiled from quite a few books he read on the subject-http://www.cmcrossroads.com/bradapp/docs/rec/stretching/stretching_5.html

As Ayashi alluded to: great flexibility is intrinsic to martial arts. Since beginning to train and teach Shotokan again, I have had to pick up my stretching a good bit. It helps with both, preventing injury, and recovery; having serious KO power in your head kicks is never a bad thing either.

 

[TechBoyJK]

I'm pretty flexible. I was very athletic growing up, and stretching was a huge part of my routine. I can get my wrists to the floor after warming up and a small stretching routine. But I can't do it without some prior stretching.

I think the trick is to be patient, and stretch often. I stretch some before I even get out of bed. Once I'm out of bed, I stretch a little more, but I don't do any stressful stressing. An hour or so after I get to work, I will do some more stretching, and actually stretch out (casually) througout the day. Once I get to the gym, I spend about 30 minutes stretching. I don't rush it. Stretching is serious business. Once I feel like I'm stretched out, I do it some more, and try to hold the stretches for as long as I can. I think getting all stretched out, and then once you feel like you are as stretched as you can be, holding your stretches for a long time is very helpful. But I wait until I feel like I'm stretched out to do the very long holds.

However, I had a hernia, so some stretches are out of the question! lol. =(

 

[darkxshade]

I used to only be able to reach my ankles... now I'm able to palm my toes. What I did is that 3x/week after my workouts, I'd hit the steam room for 6 mins(3 mins of stretching & 3 mins of rest starting with a min of rest to warm up the muscles = 6 mins). While in the steam room, I pretty much just work towards touching my toe. I would reach down as far as I can and grab the back of my legs/knee(while keeping my legs straight to keep tightness on the hams and calf). I would hold that position for a min... at first your legs feel tight because you're stretching it but after a min, you feel normal as if you're barely stretching. I would rest a min and repeat. You'll find that every subsequent stretch, you're able to go lower. After about 2 months, I was able to palm the floor, my goal is to be able to touch my forehead to my knee. I'm also starting on a new stretch so that I could do a split, not sure how to begin there though but I'm trying something I believe might work.