Are flexibility training and stretching the same thing?

Of course it is different. Stretching is only the most basic component of flexibility training, and the two are not the same concept at all.

When I was leading amateur runners to prepare for the half marathon two years ago, I met many people patting their chests and saying that their flexibility was fine. "I press my legs for 10 minutes every day before going to bed." When the hip joint mobility was measured, even the standard bending over and touching the toes was difficult, and the lunge got stuck halfway through the squat. The essence was that stretching and flexibility training were confused.

Of course, many people think, isn’t it all about stretching the muscles? Just pull twice to feel comfortable after normal exercise. There is no need to divide it so finely. This statement is not wrong. If you only need to relax your muscles temporarily, you can use it without delay. But if you really want to improve your posture, enhance your sports performance, or even solve the pain in the shoulders, neck, waist and legs caused by sitting for a long time, the effects of the two are not even the slightest bit different. If flexibility training is compared to a nutritious meal that can keep you full for most of the day, then stretching alone is at best a small cold dish before the meal. It is refreshing and appetizing, but it alone will definitely not fill your stomach and will not provide you with the necessary nutrients.

The dynamic leg press you usually do before running, sitting on the ground to stretch your hamstring muscles after running, and stretching when you are tired in the office are all considered stretching. The essence is to lengthen the muscles and fascia in a short period of time and temporarily improve local extensibility. But serious flexibility training is a systematic thing, not just stretching. Take the shoulder opening that everyone often talks about as an example. Just hang the horizontal bar and stretch your shoulders every day. After doing so for at most half an hour, the rounded shoulders will still be rounded. If you really need to develop the range of motion of the shoulder joint, in addition to basic stretching, you must also add eccentric control training of the small muscles of the rotator cuff and strengthen the strength of the upper back muscles. , if the joints are severely stuck, you must cooperate with the joint loosening techniques of the rehabilitation practitioner, and the PNF proprioceptive stretching commonly used in the rehabilitation circle, which will be combined with the steps of active muscle contraction and relaxation, and the effect is much better than simple passive stretching. These are all included in the category of flexibility training.

I met a girl who works in design before. She sat for 10 hours a day to draw, and her rounded shoulders stretched forward a lot. She stretched her shoulders and neck according to the video for more than half a year, but she still felt comfortable after two hours of stretching every time. She still had pain when she went to work the next day. Later, I adjusted her plan and made it 10 hours a day. Minutes of simple stretching were changed to 10 minutes of stretching plus 15 minutes of shoulder and back weak muscle training, plus 30 seconds of thoracic spine rotation every hour of sitting. After just over two months of practice, most of the rounded shoulders have been retracted, and the shoulder and neck pain that I had suffered every week has basically disappeared.

To put it bluntly, if you just pull a few hands to loosen your muscles after exercising, no one will fault you if you call stretching flexibility training. However, if you really have a clear goal - whether you want to do the splits smoothly, increase the range of the squat, or improve the various discomforts caused by sitting for a long time, don't just stretch and feel that it is enough. It is really half the effort with half the effort.