The BIG Tips

Stretch every day. In fact, stretch as many times during the day as you can. Consistency
is the key. Even if you don't have time for a rigorous stretching session, it still helps to
take a few minutes and do what you can comfortably. Most people place a lot of
emphasis on how much time is spent stretching. Well, I believe that the amount of time
spent not stretching is equally important. When you are inactive, your muscles and
ligaments are tightening up and becoming shorter. Therefore, the more often you can
remind your body that this tightening is unacceptable, the better off you will be. Try to
get into the habit of using more of your range of motion than you need to for household
tasks. For example, try putting one leg up on the counter (like a ballet barre) while
chopping vegetables. Also, don't bend your knees when you pick something up from the
floor. And, while watching TV, get out of your chair and sit on the floor in a straddle
position. Such activity, along with some light stretching throughout the day, will help
keep you limber all day long. This is especially important for martial artists who need to
be able to kick high when they are cold, and for dancers who may not get adequate time
to warmup before a performance.

The "optimal time" to hold a stretch is a topic many people disagree on. Most
agree that longer is better, but that there is a point in time when the efficiency of
the stretch declines to a point where the time would be better spent on another
stretch. In my opinion, the minimum time to reach this point is 30 seconds. But, I
think that one minute is better, and I've seen some gymnastics coaches make their
students hold their splits as long as five minutes. If you can't hold a given stretch
for at least 30 seconds, you are probably trying to go to far.

When doing passive stretches, it is most important to relax and breathe normally.
You should assume a position that you can hold, and then relax. You should feel
mild discomfort as you begin, but as you relax, the stretch should become easier.
When this happens, increase the stretch until you feel the original intensity again.
For example, when doing straddle stretches, you should relax until the stretch gets
easier, then widen the angle between your legs. You don't need to come out of
some positions (like the straddle) before increasing the stretch, while you will
need an occasional break between others (like a backbend bridge). Keep repeating
the cycle of relaxing and increasing the stretch until the position does not become
easier after relaxing into it for one minute. This is your maximum range. Please
note that the "optimal time" mentioned above applies to the time spent in this final
position. The total time spent working toward this position will be much longer
than the "optimal time". You may not always have time to reach your maximum
range, but (as always) something is better than nothing.

There is no optimal number of repetitions. You should simply repeat the

"stretch and increase" procedure described above until you reach your maximum
range. Different people will take different amounts of time to reach their
maximum range, so just go at your own pace. In fact, the time and effort required
to reach your maximum range will vary from time to time. In general, if you are

starting out with tight muscles for whatever reason (just woke up, haven't
stretched in a while, etc.), then it will take longer.

The best time to stretch is immediately after a workout, especially if it involved

cardiovascular exercise. Your muscles can relax and elongate more easily when
they are warm. It is usually not a good idea to try and do intense flexibility
training (the kind which increases your range of motion) right after you get out of
bed. However, I do recommend doing light stretches in the morning. As I pointed
out in the first BIG Tip, this will help keep you limber throughout the day. And, as
the above point implies, this will save you time when you go to do your serious
stretching later in the evening.

Make sure that you are doing the stretches correctly (proper body alignment).
Where appropriate, keep your legs straight, hips square, etc..

Stretch both sides equally. If one side is tighter than the other, you should spend
more time on your bad side until they are even.

Whenever possible, try and rotate or twist your body when bending. For example,
try moving from a front split to a straddle split with out having to raise your pelvis
from the floor (you may use your hands and come up a bit, if necessary). Also,
when bending forward or backwards, try going sideways to the left or right at the
same time (and then repeat on the other side).

When doing partner stretching, use extreme caution, and maintain constant
communication with your partner to avoid injury. When done properly and safely,
partner stretching can greatly accelerate the rate of your flexibility development.

June 16, 1935

The Minneapolis Sunday Tribune
Another mystery of the human body - the spine - has just been pierced by
science throught the medium of the X-ray. It has resulted in many new
revelations that may contribute to the valuable study of tuberculosis, fracture and
curvature of the spine.
While these things belong more to the realm of medical knowledge, the
experiment, recently conducted in the Graduate Hospital of the University of
Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, brought forth many unusual facts hitherto
unknown to or little understood by the average layman.
For instance, it upset a popular belief - never subscribed to by science - that
there is such a thing as "double-jointedness". But more important, it presented a
striking object lesson in the effects of careful training upon the correct
development of all parts of the body.
The subject of this most unusual experiment was, appropriately enough, a
famous New York acrobatic dancer, petite Miss Florence Elta Barlow, still in her

teens. In submitting to the X-ray examination she probably contributed even

more to medical knowledge than she has to the enjoyment of theatre and
nightclub patrons.
It was the extraordinary flexibility of Miss Barlow's body, as revealed in her
acrobatic dancing acts, that attracted the attention of science. It was discovered
that she could do things that would be fatal to most human beings and yet she
remained a normal, healthy girl. Science asked:
Why?
Her history alone helped much to provide the answer. Years ago Miss Barlow's
father perfected himself in acrobatic dancing and then conceived the idea that
this could be a thing of beauty and grace, a form of dance as rhythmic as the
waltz. So he began to train his little daughter when she was only four years old.
Patiently father and daughter worked until Florence had perfected her body to a
point where she can now literally "sit upon her own head". While thousands
applauded her, medical men pondered the causes of her achievements. They
were particularly struck by the fact that nightly she could assume the position of
bending backwards, almost in "two". At this time many of the vital organs were
greatly displaced, but this seemed to do her no harm, proving that the human
body is susceptible to much training in unusual positions.
Miss Barlow consented to go to a hospital and be X-rayed in order that scientists
might learn why her spine had been trained to do these things which other spines
cannot do.
The X-rays first of all revealed that she has a hyper-extension of the spine. This
may be explained by comparing the spine to a piece of corset steel, highly
flexible, and a piece of wood. The corset steel can be bent almost in two and will
return to its original form, while the piece of wood will bend slightly, but will break
when it reaches a certain point. Miss Barlow's spine is like the corset steel, while
the ordinary girl's spine is like the piece of wood.
This hyper-extension of the spine is, in other words, a great flexibility. It was
achieved by the dancer, first of all, by training almost from infancy or before the
development of ossification of the bones. Ossificationis the process of the bones
growing harder as the individual becomes older.
We often see very young children who can "bend the crab" very well while
playing n school yards. The children can do this so well because ossification has
not developed far. As they grow older it is more difficult and they don't try it. This
is why we never, or rarely, see children of ten or more doing this "for fun".
Yet they could do it almost until old age IF they trained intensively, never letting
up. If Miss Barlow, for instance, stopped doing her work for one year, she could
never do it again, since the spine and muscles would immediately tend to return
to average development. To do her work, she must practice constantly.
Aside from training, heredity admittedly had something to do with Miss Barlow's
achievements. Doctors discovered a hereditary mobility in the joints that
permitted them to slip over each other with more ease than in ordinary persons.

This, however, is NOT "double-jointedness", a popular phrase that has no place

in medical parlance. What people call double-jointedness is merely a flexibility of
the joints, trained and inherited.
The ability of some people to bend their fingers backwards, especially little boys,
falls into this category. In a small measure anyone could be trained to do these
things - if, as we have seen before, the training began in very early youth.
When Miss Barlow bends her spine, it does not mean the vertebrae are
separated. They are held together with ligaments and muscles. The X-ray photos
did not show this because it is the trick of the X-ray to penetrate through muscles
and show the bones.
But it is the ability of Miss Barlow to bend her spine until the vertebrae are far
apart that reveals the extreme mobility of the joints. The average person's
vertebrae seldom open more than a fraction of a fraction of an inch when he or
she bends backward. That is because the average muscle of the back is not, like
Miss Barlow's, tremendously developed.
Most, if not all, deaths resulting from falls are due to the spine being bent
backward beyond its point of flexibility and then being broken. "The back is
broken" is the common phrase. With the normal person having a spine likened to
a piece of wood it does break, but with Miss Barlow, the spine bends like the
corset steel.
In other words, if she fill andhad the presence of mind to relax her back she
would merely roll over and over, while the average person would remain rigid and
have his or her back broken. Of course, that does not mean Miss Barlow could
fall from great heights and live, but the point is that it would be extremely more
difficult to hurt her than ordinary persons.
Since most deaths due to accidens in falls and automobile collisions are the
result of broken backs, the X-ray study of Miss Barlow is of great value to
surgeons, for it will cast light on the study of the spine in hyper-extension.
(Obviously, physicians couldn't break human backs by bending them backward
just for the purpose of studying them.)
In the same way, the X-rays will contribute much to the study of curvature of the
spine, its causes and prevention. For one thing, Miss Barlow has demonstrated
that it is just as easy to train the spine correctly as it is to train it incorrectly. The
latter "training" is by no means scarce.
Curvature of the spine is a deformity which comes on during the developing
period of life, before the "bodies" of the vertebrae are solidly formed. In young
people who are growing rapidly and whose muscular systems are weak, the bad
habit of standing and throwing the weight of the body constantly on one leg gives
rise to a serious tilting of the trunk; or ir, when writing at a desk, they sit habitually
in a twisted position, a lateral curvature of the spine is apt to form. By constant
indulgence in these bad habits the spinal column gets permanently set in a faulty
position.
The extraordinary results of these experiments should not obscure the fact that

Florence Barlow is different from other girls ONLY because she has trained her
spine to perfection. Her childhood was exactly like that of other girls, except for
this special training, and today she is a healthy, happy miss - perhaps a little
happier in the knowledge that she has contributed so much to science.