Flexibility training equipment

Flexibility training equipment has never been a must for stretching, but choosing the right equipment that suits your training stage and physical conditions can help ordinary trainers reduce the risk of movement compensation by about 30% and increase stretching efficiency by at least 40%. Professional athletes can even use specific equipment to break through the genetic upper limit of joint mobility.

The fitness studio I stayed at a while ago had a stockpile of annual worn-out materials. Half a box of unopened internet celebrity yoga wheels, open-backed sticks with peeling paint piled in the corner, and an inline horse support stand that had only been used twice took up a small half of the storage room. They were all placed here by novice students who ordered them on a whim and used them twice before finding them useless. Many people either regard this type of equipment as a god, thinking that they can easily do shoulder splits as long as they buy it, or they completely deny it, saying that it is all an IQ tax and that freehand stretching is the truth. In fact, both sides are reasonable, but the needs are completely different.

Several sports rehabilitation practitioners I know who came from Peking University Third Hospital are inseparable from a few wedge-shaped foam pads that cost about ten yuan. They perform ankle dorsiflexion recovery for patients after anterior forearm surgery and waist stretching for people whose lumbar spine curvature has straightened. They rely on this small pad to hold the angle. It is much more accurate than bare hands and does not cause additional shearing force on the joints. In the rehabilitation circle, this low-cost small device is simply needed. But the group of friends who practice self-respecting street fitness did not buy it at all. When we talked about this together before, they rolled their eyes and said that all the exercises achieved by using equipment were "fake flexibility". Without the equipment, the range of motion was immediately reduced. They practiced horizontal splits and vertical splits by using their legs on the flat ground, and rarely even used yoga mats. The range of motion they achieved was all "real skill" that they could control.

In fact, the difference between the two is essentially a different demand for flexibility - the first thing that rehabilitation people need to open is passive range of motion, which is the maximum range of joint movement that can be achieved with the help of external force. Equipment can help them accurately control the force angle and avoid secondary injuries.； What bodyweight trainers need is active flexibility, that is, the range of motion that can be achieved without relying on external force and relying on their own muscle control. Over-reliance on equipment will make the core and stabilizing muscles lazy, and the training effect will not be achieved.

I injured my rotator cuff after falling while skiing last year. At its worst, it hurt when I raised my hand to the level of my shoulder. At first, I couldn’t find any force when doing shoulder stretching with my bare hands. Either the trapezius muscle was compensating and causing neck pain, or the strength was not strong enough and it was ineffective. I listened to the advice of a rehabilitation specialist and bought a 9.9-dollar elastic band. I put it on my wrist for external rotation and stretching every time I warmed up. It was just enough to transfer the force to the rotator muscles of the forearm. It relieved most of the pain in half a month. It was much more effective than the half-day rubbing I did before.

As for the one-word horse support stand that has become very popular in Xiaohongshu recently, there are also polarizing reviews around me. When I was a young girl, a junior girl who studied classical dance pressed her crotch and stretched the soft tissue, and the crotch root was always tight. As an adult, she could not remove the cross brace no matter how hard she used it. After I bought the support stand with slide rails, I slowly adjusted the angle and pressed it, and there was no sudden force like the teacher's pressure. The cross brace was firmly removed in three months without hurting the ligaments.； But another friend of mine who teaches vinyasa flow yoga is particularly disgusted with this equipment. She said that she has met several students who can lower the horizontal split with the help of the auxiliary frame. When they stand up and do forward bends, their fingertips cannot even touch the ground. They all rely on the angle created by the equipment. The core is loose throughout the process, and they cannot really practice flexibility at all.

NSCA published a related study two years ago, saying that if ordinary people with no training foundation first use a foam roller to relax the deep fascia and then do static stretching, the activity of the hamstring muscles can be increased by 42% higher than pure freehand stretching. This data has been verified by the control group, and it also shows that the equipment does have its value.

But there is really no need to chase expensive ones. I have seen bosses spend thousands to buy imported pneumatic stretching chairs for their homes. They only use them three times a year. It is better to pass by the leg press bar in the community fitness area after work and stand and press the back of the legs for three minutes every day for half a month. The relaxing effect is much more effective than sitting on that chair and stretching it once. By the way, there are those Internet-famous back-opening sticks. Don’t use them blindly. Last month, I helped a friend receive a consultation from a little girl. In order to cure hunchback, I stood with the back-opening stick for half an hour every day. It forced the already straight thoracic spine into an abnormal curvature. It took almost half a month to recover from the pain. No matter how good the equipment is, using it in the wrong way is worse than not using it at all.

To put it bluntly, there is no "must-have list" of flexibility training equipment. If you usually sit for a long time and your waist is tight and your shoulders are stiff, buy a foam roller and an elastic band to put in the office. If you have nothing to do, roll it down and pull it down twice. It is better than carrying the pain.； If you already have exercise habits and have enough mobility, you don't need to buy any equipment. Just pull in place for two minutes after training every day. After all, it’s never the equipment itself that ultimately helps you improve your flexibility, it’s the persistence of the rules.