I want to be more flexible - what do I do, and how do I do it?

[fleshconsumed]

It's been a while since I posted on health and fitness. 5-6 years ago I realized that I really let myself go, I was in poor shape feeling crappy, sleepy, and depressed all the time. I decided I've had enough so I cleaned up my diet, started biking, became more active, dropped 60lbs and generally feel good about myself.

However, there is still one thing that I really want to do - I want to become more flexible. I'm really really bad in the flexibility department, just downright horrible. I thought I'd start doing yoga to help me be more flexible, but I think I have to work my way up to it first. To give you an idea how bad it is, I can't even reach floor if I bend over, there are like good 6" between the tips of my fingers and the floor. My leg muscles/hamstrings/whatever are just killing me when I try to do it. It's really pathetic.

I've started doing some leg and hip stretches in the evenings, about 10 minutes at a time. I'm not quite sure what I'm doing, I've found some youtube channel of a girl that does stretch exercises and I'm trying to follow some of the stuff that she does: https://www.youtube.com/user/psychetruth

I'd really appreciate if you guys could help me out here.
- What exercises should I be doing?
- How much time should I devote to the stretching exercises every day to get measurable results in a couple of months?
- Is there anything I should be looking out for to avoid injuries? Some of the poses twist my knees a bit to the point of hurting a bit, aside from general advice don't do it if it hurts too much, is there anything I should specifically avoid at least at first?

 

[Pantlegz]

Yoga is fine even if you're fairly inflexible, I was more than I'd like to admit and yoga even just once a week made a huge difference for me. I'd suggest doing them in person rather than youtube because it's hard to know if you're doing it right. I really like Ido Portal's work - natural movement is getting more popular. People are realizing being powerful is useless unless you can apply it outside of just one that plane. The downside to Ido is a lot of his stuff, even the beginner routines are fairly difficult.

 

[FalconHorse]

I generally don't drink the crossfit kool-aid, but you might want to check out KellyStarrett's channel.

Example hamstring video on his channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZB-mQB_dpw

 

[RandomWords]

Flexibility is a slow process -easy to keep but hard to get - especially the older you get - be careful not to do too much at one time; similar to the approach you take with weight training. You are basically telling your body to make your ligaments more elastic and everything takes time. If you use to be flexible - it will be a lot easier. To start keep it reasonable - don't hold any single stretch for 5-10 minutes - more like 30 seconds to a minute with, I dunno, no more than 3 variations on a single muscle... something like that. Some advice will tell you everyday - but I've concluded, like weight training, it's best to give your body a day or two inbetween. You might want to come to your own conclusion though.

I don't see a problem with doing yoga, even where you are at, as long as you keep form - it's tougher than it looks if you have a teacher that knows what they are doing - your whole body should be engaged in the movements from your toes to your fingers to the top of your head.

Simple flexibility movements are just as good and will get you a long ways to where you want to go - don't simply focus on just a few muscles though - just as bad as weight training that way unless you have a muscular imbalance that needs correcting.

... I would avoid twisting your knees - I don't see that resulting in anything good.