You're listening to the nasm CPT podcast with Rick Richie the official podcast of the National Academy of sports medicine. Welcome to the nasm podcast. My name is Rick Ritchie. And today we're going to be talking about the nasm flexibility Continuum. This integrated flexibility Continuum and means we're not just picking one thing becauseLike that thing is that were taken flexibility Concepts putting them together putting it in a Continuum and making it make sense for your clients depending on where they are. And when I was a young man, I did martial arts. I still do martial arts, but I did martial arts where we focused a lot on acrobatics and gymnastics and I was able to do that sweet little Jean Claude Van Damme splits between two chairs move. That's right. I was able to do the Enter splits between two chairs I could do the front splits on both legs. Yo, I had skills. No joke. This was amazing looking back at that. I am amazed that this body was once able to do stuff like that you talk about if you don't use it, you lose it. So those are one that was a long time ago, but being able to do that gave me an understanding of flexibility that many people will never comprehend but it also didn't set me up to truly understand what flexibility was and and it's Purpose it was important to me because I wanted to be able to do the splits and I wanted to be able to kick really high and I wanted to be able to do these really Dynamic looking exercises, but the functionality of it was really not truly explored now, it was important for what I was doing at the time. So we need to make sure that we understand that we may support people in something that they have efforts towards for instance people who might need flexibility for their craft or their art certainly martial artists come to mind dancers come to mind as well. But are we helping our clients get into this range of motion or we thinking that that all of our clients need to have this incredible range of motion. I don't think anybody thinks that but that might be a goal of somebody's we also want to understand why they have those goals and if we have those goals we can help support them in reaching it maybe some of the stuff we'll talk about the day helps, but also a need to understand that I might Somebody then I'm draining that wants to be flexible. But if you look at them, they actually need to increase their stability and they don't want to lose their stability because this hypermobility if I have a hyper mobile clients and they tell me and for no reason so they're not doing martial arts and they're not dancers and they know they're not doing other things that that this is important for and they're just saying, hey my hamstrings feel tight. They feel tight and then you go to stretch their hamstring and at 9090 position and the right up into that position and you go back and they're like bullshit back towards my head. I want to be able to guess my thigh, whatever it is and they go back they don't need you to stretch them. They may need to increase some stability. But look at that range of motion and sometimes what we referred to as naive flexibility or flexibility without a purpose. So you want to be very Aware that you're not creating potential any contraindications by overstretching someone and then of course if somebody is telling you that they feel tight when understand also that feelings are not facts and just because something feels tight doesn't mean that it is tight. It's not mechanically tight certainly in the situation neurologically. It might be tight because it is doing something to draw probably try to stabilize a joint. So neurologically is becoming very active. So so base everything that you do off of thorough assessments. Now let's talk about the flexibility Continuum. I like this because one of those brilliant things about the opt model. It's its Simplicity and the flexibility Continuum goes really well with that stabilization strength and power phase and you've got three different versions of flexibility that we're going to look at and to write integrated flexibility Continuum. There's corrective flexibility Act of flexibility and Optional flexibility now, these are Headliners. These are the topics the types of flexibility that we want to help people get and maintain there are techniques that allow us to get there every one of these across the board whether it's corrected flexibility Act of flexibility or functional flexibility can all use What nasm refers to as self myofascial release or what's commonly referred to as phone. Rolling, so you can use foam rolling and any one of these modalities to help with corrective flexibility to increase active flexibility and to provide functional flexibility. So foam rolling across the board if you are like what should I do in terms of flexibility and you were stuck on an island and you were only given one option which in this example doesn't make any sense because you can do corrective flexibility active or functional if you're stuck on an island, but I think you understand if you could pick one thing. Foam rolling might be one of those things that it's just highly indicated regardless of which section that you're in that you could do across the board. So it's highly indicated regardless of what your flexibility outcomes are. Looking to be now one important thing to understand understand about corrective flexibility as we start to identify what Falls underneath it corrected flexibility is designed to increase joint range of motion. That's really its purpose. I want to increase range of motion at a joint it can help to improve muscle imbalance. Why because we're Limited in a range of motion and it can help to correct altered joint range of motion. So there might be this Arthur kinetic imbalance that's taking place and it's going to help with how potentially we can our muscles can can glide and how they can roll. So be aware of that and understand that corrective flexibility is really to Imbalances now that goes back to this conversation we're having about somebody that's really flexible and you give them perhaps that hamstring stretch and they say they feel like they need it. But when you look at them, they don't need that they are incredibly flexible. They're hyper mobile or overly mobile corrective flexibility is designed for people who are hypo mobile people who have lower mobility and decreased range of motion. The only time that I would suggest potential he doing static stretching for somebody that might have already increased range of motion might be after a pretty intense workout and those muscles truly are tight and they were potentially getting quite sore than that stretch can help to create an inhibition that causes those muscles to relax a little bit. So corrective flexibility. You have two things. You got the self-myofascial release, you've got static stretching self-myofascial release or foam rolling and static stretching static stretching into take that. And you're going to hold a stretch for a minimum of 30 seconds and I tell my clients all the time. You may need to do more than 30 seconds you made to do 60 seconds. And the only reason I tell him that is because they do that one to skip a few method so they're not really doing 30 seconds. They're doing about eight seconds and they go all I had to have been 30 seconds. So sometimes I'll tell him to do more and there's actually a wonderful study that It showed the several different people within a research study where they did either 30 seconds and then they did up to a hold of a hundred and twenty seconds and the 30 second hold group was just as effective as the hundred and twenty second hold group. Well, what's Happening Here? Usually what happens is we're looking for not just a mechanical extension of the muscle, but we're looking to get the muscle neurologically to And so or to become inhibited and this term is called autogenic inhibition autogenic inhibition and a static stretch. As you are statically stretching a muscle. Let's say hamstrings because that's a common one that people talk about so stretch the hamstrings when you stretch the hamstrings the hamstrings get tight. They don't like being stretched. There is a there is a mechanoreceptor in the body as you start to lengthen the muscle depending on the length or how much you lengthen it and how fast First you lengthen it this mechanoreceptor will see that and it'll go. I don't like that. I do not like what this feels like so that stretch ometer that's in there is going to be the the muscle spindle and the Golgi tendon organ is a tension ometer. It's measuring the amount of tension. So as we stretch in that muscle spindle stretches, whether it's overly lengthened or quickly lengthened it To tighten up and it says man, we're going to hurt this muscle if we keep stretching. Laughter about 30 seconds. The Golgi tendon organ is feeling this tight muscle and it's going man if we keep stretching this and I don't relax we might hurt this muscle or it might be looking at it and say I feel we've been here for a while. It seems kind of safe to me. So let's just relax the muscle right now because I think we're cool. We're absolutely fine. And so the GTO might allow for relaxation and the spindle and the GTO are within the same muscle. His autogenic inhibition causing the muscle to relax when you do things like a static stretch and also the similar thing that happens when you're doing self myofascial release or foam rolling or all AKA roller massage, you're going to get the same outcomes. You're going to get this autogenic inhibition as a thank you for listening to the nasm CPT podcast. I've got a special offer for you 20% off of any nasm order you can use that 20% to get certified as a personal trainer. Rescue PT program the standard for the fitness industry or expand your career with one of our specializations including our latest One nasm Nutrition certification which gives you the skills to be a certified nutrition coach get 20 percent off your order by calling 804 6-0 6-2 7-6 or visiting nasm dot org and using the code podcast 20 that's 800 for 6-0 6-2 7-6 and the discount code is podcast 20 start changing even more lives today. Well, that's it for corrective flexibility. It's appropriate at the stabilization level. So again kind of the Brilliance of this entire setup is that we can take our flexibility Continuum or integrated flexibility Continuum. And then we start plugging it in now, there are some people who will look at static stretching and they say, oh I don't like static stretching static stretching doesn't work static stretching this static stretching that clearly there's some some stretch bias that's going into there because there's plenty of research that shows that static stretching works at increasing range of motion. But why are you trying to increase range of motion? I think that we need to always have that in mind, but the other thing that happens we look at corrective flexibility in static stretching is that yes, there's research that plenty that shows that it works to help increase range of motion, but why would somebody look at that and say it doesn't work? Well, it might be because of the benefits that come from active stretching so we have that we do that also we have Active flexibility as a component of our integrated flexibility Continuum, where will do active isolated stretching and what we don't do is we don't say hey, there's active stretching and they're static stretching pick one. What's your favorite and then downplay the importance of everything else? I look at that and I say many others are serious flaw in what you're doing. That's a serious flaw what that is is it you're not looking at the whole picture you go in and you look at a painting then some paintings have really really wonderful designs in it. But if you're standing up really close to the painting all you might see are a bunch of dots. And then you back away slowly and those dots start to create a bigger a more fluid picture a richer picture of understanding and that's what I think. We should look at here instead of arguing which is better and just because I choose this one. The other one doesn't work. What we should be doing is finding out who is this for and what are the benefits for and if there are benefits in every single bits of self myofascial release and and static Retching and neuromuscular stretching an active isolated stretching and dynamic structure stretching the why would we exclude anything as they integrated model? And as we start to figure out what are some other means of flexibility that are valuable they'll start BMP integrated into the model as well. Because they have value they have a purpose and they follow along with in this kind of integrated concept. So once you've moved on from helping to assist somebody with increasing the range of motion now, what you want to do is you want to apply strength to their Newfound range of motion. So if you don't apply strength to it, you have to continue to statically stretch it in order for it to maintain its new range of motion. Well, I want to provide strength to my new range of motion if I can provide strength to it it now has function it now has a purpose so a great Sample, I like to do is clearly we made talk or you may hear a lot of people talk about tight hip flexors people sitting in a chair and their hips are in a flexed position and the hips become adaptively shortened into that hip flexed position and we want to say well now I need to provide some strength maybe to my hip extensors. So I've got a new range of motion from my corrective flexibility in my hip flexors, and now I'm going to use my hip Tensors and active isolated stretching to pull me into a new range of motion. So that stretch that static stretch a minimum of via a 30 second hold with an active stretch. You're not looking at something nearly that long you're looking into going in to that range of motion holding. It may be hip driving squeezing the glute to get a hip extension to stretch those hip flexors and to be honest the goal of this. Shouldn't be looking at this and saying hey, I don't feel my hip flexor stretch. Not the point. That's not the point. The point is getting the hip extensors to move you through it. So this is no longer about the muscles. You were working with corrective exercise when it turns it comes to like did I feel that muscle it is now about feeling that you're going through that range of motion in your hip extensors are taking you through hip extension and the hip flexors are agreeing to go through that motion. You might have clients where you have them do a floor bridge and when they do a floor Bridge, they rub the front of their thighs and they say but I feel it here. Well those people that's a great Act of stretch for them because they're getting an actual stretch and the rectus femoris but also making sure that the glutes are your primary hip extensors and that and that it's not hamstring dominant because we don't want to go through this act of flexibility and start to create a synergistic dominant situation we The primary extensor to be the primary extensor. We want the center just to be the synergist. So active flexibility provides strength to your new range of motion. It's going to increase your neuromuscular efficiency and it's going to do this via something called reciprocal inhibition not autogenic reciprocal inhibition autogenic inhibition is going to be held for how long that's right about 30 seconds reciprocal inhibition is thing about in math classes. We had fractions there. Has a numerator and denominator and if you wanted to multiply out of it, you had to get the reciprocal reciprocal which means the thing on the other side. So reciprocal inhibition, the glutes are the thing on the other side. That's the muscle that you may want to really activate and when that happens the muscle on the opposite side ideally is going to now relax. If not, you've got something called altered reciprocal inhibition. And so what we want to do is we want to provide. Linked to the short tight overactive muscles and then provide strength to the opposing muscle groups. So now we can work through a newfound range of motion and provides strength into that Newfound range of motion. And that's the value of active flexibility and it's something that's undervalued in a lot of training. So your personal trainers that are out there. You see pts that are out there doing the thing. I love that your foam rolling. I love that you're doing static stretching the increase range of motion. But you all let's start getting the act of flexibility in their start taking them through active flexibility exercises and do several repeats because this is done in the strength level and the value of this is because it's even our flexibility is a strength training exercise here. We're providing strength activation to the glutes prior to going and doing a leg based glute based exercise like a squad or deadlift. So now I'm going to go through my activities. Flexibility as prep work for my strength training which is beautiful because it's just a bunch of activation exercises for muscles will refer to it here right now is active flexibility, but there are activation exercises. And then finally we ever hear studies that say oh static stretching don't do that because it limits how fast you're going to run. Yeah, I get that. But remember static stretching is designed to increase range of motion and it's generally done in Phase or level one of the opt model. If you're in the top level level 3 the power level of the opt model, you're not doing corrective flexibility. Most likely unless you've got a severe and kind of Nicole imbalance, you're not doing active flexibility, you're doing functional flexibility functional flexor flexibility. Yes, you're going to you can use thest self-myofascial release or foam rolling, but then you've got Dynamic stretching Dynamic stretching is the technique that is applied. You know dynamic stretching can be leg swings. All right, those hamstrings swings. It could be legs swinging back for the dynamic hip flexor stretch. There are these side to side swings for your ad and adductors. But you can do squats. And though that's not as incredibly Dynamic it is certainly functional and really functional flexibility. What we're trying to get out of it is the ability to do that Squat and to be able to do that Squat and better form in every time you go through a range of motion and a functional exercise. You need functional flexibility to do that. So it's all appropriate whether you're doing corrective flexibility or static stretching where they're you're doing active flexibility as a technique active isolated stretching or functional flexibility for dynamic stretching adding your self myofascial release or your foam rolling in there, but finding where your clients are or where you are personally and what type of flexibility you should be working on. All right, y'all thank you so much. My name is Rick Richie. You can hit me up at Ric Ric came. That rich ER IC H ey and nasm dot-org. Holler at me. Let me know what you thought of this podcast and if there's something else you want me to talk about or speak on that I can help support you with let me know. This is the nasm CPT podcast.
NASM provides an integrated model of flexibility that includes corrective, active, and functional flexibility categories. The specific techniques used within the Integrated Flexibility Continuum are as follows: Integrated Flexibility Continuum Corrective Flexibility – designed to increase joint ROM for shortened muscles. It is specifically for the areas of hypomobility. SMR/SMT/Foam Rolling  Static Stretching  Active Flexibility   SMR/SMT/Foam Rolling  Active Isolated Stretching  Functional Flexibility    SMR/SMT/Foam Rolling   Dynamic Flexibility  This episode talks about just because muscles “feel” tight doesn’t mean that they are in fact tight. Assessments are to be done to identify shortened muscles verses lengthened muscles. In an integrated model the progression from on type of flexibility category to another should be aspired to. As initial limits in ROM begin to increase through corrective strategies, more active techniques can be applied to provide strength to the new found ROM. Just like in the OPT model, once strength gains are made, speed can be applied. In this case, functional flexibility can include dynamic flexibility techniques where momentum and speed are added to the stretch. This integrated flexibility continuum is a brilliant, yet simple model to follow to support our client’s flexibility needs. 