Help Stretching?

[Green_Tea]

Rowing for seven years made me loose flexibility even though we'd stretch at practice. My hamstrings have gotten so bad. I can touch my toes but I can tell I have difficulty with heel kicks because of it (I think in eight basic kicks heel kicks are the hardest, even harder than cresent kicks). I also can't do my splits anymore and that frustrated me. I used to take dance so I had gotten pretty flexible. But I'm slowly but surely getting it back. I've got about another two frustrating inches to go on my right split. I was thinking about getting the book, "Stretching Scientifically". Any thoughts?

[FooFighter]

Flexibility training takes time and you need to keep stretching intelligently. You should try several techniques such active isolatation, ballistic stretch, and passive. I like doing ballistic stretches before martial arts training. I do short PNF stretch before my workout and then passive stretches at the end of a workout. Do not do any passive stretches before your workout because it will negatively effect your performance. If flexibility is your main concern and want to learn additional body awareness techniques and meet sexy women, then I would highly recommend that you take up yoga seriously for about two months. Go and practice regularly and you'll be flexible, learn something cool, and maybe meet someone nice. <wink>

[Green_Tea]

A few friends of mine teach yoga and I went to a class to try to supplement. I need to go again to give it another chance but I was having problems getting into it, possibly because I'm still new to things. It defiently made me feel even less flexible seeing everyone stretching way ****her than I could *lol*. As for meeting women, funny enough most of the class I went to was made up of guys. I think the teacher, me, and my two friends were the only females in there, heh heh.

As for the other info you gave, I'm not really sure what the different types of stretching are. Do you know of any websites that might clue me in? Thanks for your help!

[FooFighter]

Green_Tea:

I am sorry if you were offended by sexist comments. I did not know you were a woman. In NYC, many females yuppies and
ho-mosexual urban hipsters take YoGa. It is very trendy in NYC and a while back I studied Yoga with Guru Dharma Mittra. Besides learning Indian health/metaphysical sciences, I have dated a couple of my yoga classmates, especially the flexible ones. <wink>

There are several books you can look at your local bookstore. I highly recommend you check out Pavel Tsatsoline's books "Relax into Stretch" and/or "SuperJoint" and even checkout his website www.dragondoor.com. If you have the money, I personally like the videos/dvd of Pavel's flexibility books.

[Green_Tea]

That's okay, the "real" ;) guys on the list were probably taking note ;). I have a pretty androgenous name. I'll look into the book. I used to be so much better when I was a ballerina. Ahhh, the "Skinny Tiny Lesley Days" *nostalgia*... er anyway ;) the hubby and I always "compete" to see who can get down lower, so that helps :).