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Hi toes! It's been so long!
Dec. 20th, 2012 12:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daedalaSo, I am very excited, because I was able to touch my toes in my workout yesterday. Standing up, legs straight but not locked, fingertips on the tops of my minimalist shoes. I haven't done this in at least 20 years, maybe more like 25 -- not since I was a kid. It's bothered me that I couldn't do it for that long, too. I've tried a lot of things that were supposed to help.
Almost a year of yoga with an instructor didn't help at all. Years of Pilates, home stretching/yoga, etc. -- none of it helped. I also tried Rolfing (the full series), partly for other issues, but also hoping it would help with that. That seemed to help a little, but not enough to reach my toes.
What did help was finally getting a personal trainer to learn barbell lifts. (I'd previously worked at home, on my own, with dumbbells.) I told him my goals were range of motion, good form, and independence. The flexibility issues were so intractable that I didn't even mention toe touching or anything like that -- I just wanted to be able to do the lifts, and I thought the active/weightbearing mobility work that was popular in the weightlifting community would help.
And, lo, I can touch my toes. In seven sessions (three weeks). I was complaining about not being able to do that and I bent down to demonstrate and proved myself wrong. I do mobility work before each workout (~ 3x week...I'm going to do it every day now). I don't know, to be honest, whether it's the mobility work, the lifting, or the combination that did it, and maybe having the tissue in better shape with the Rolfing beforehand -- it's possible that the bodywork was necessary, but not sufficient.
The program the trainer made for me is actually not what I asked for (the first session, where we did squat/bench/deadlift/overhead press, left me with DOMS so bad we had to seriously modify the next one, and I didn't realize he'd set me up with a four-day split, which...probably is not ideal for someone as close to beginner as me). But it works, and even if I seriously doubt it's the split that's working, I'm not going to argue with touching my toes.
Another nice thing is that first day, I found out that I definitely qualify as "decent" according to this T-nation article. T-nation is vastly annoying, but often has really good information, and I've long considered that article a good set of goals for me. While I have trouble with full pushups and pullups, my deadlift, bench, and overhead press were all good. (The squat has range-of-motion issues, but I'm pretty sure that I could handle the weight.) The pushups and pullups are probably more "how to move" issues than "not strong enough" issues.
I have no idea if this would apply to anyone else, but I know there are others who can't touch toes, and maybe this information will help!
Almost a year of yoga with an instructor didn't help at all. Years of Pilates, home stretching/yoga, etc. -- none of it helped. I also tried Rolfing (the full series), partly for other issues, but also hoping it would help with that. That seemed to help a little, but not enough to reach my toes.
What did help was finally getting a personal trainer to learn barbell lifts. (I'd previously worked at home, on my own, with dumbbells.) I told him my goals were range of motion, good form, and independence. The flexibility issues were so intractable that I didn't even mention toe touching or anything like that -- I just wanted to be able to do the lifts, and I thought the active/weightbearing mobility work that was popular in the weightlifting community would help.
And, lo, I can touch my toes. In seven sessions (three weeks). I was complaining about not being able to do that and I bent down to demonstrate and proved myself wrong. I do mobility work before each workout (~ 3x week...I'm going to do it every day now). I don't know, to be honest, whether it's the mobility work, the lifting, or the combination that did it, and maybe having the tissue in better shape with the Rolfing beforehand -- it's possible that the bodywork was necessary, but not sufficient.
The program the trainer made for me is actually not what I asked for (the first session, where we did squat/bench/deadlift/overhead press, left me with DOMS so bad we had to seriously modify the next one, and I didn't realize he'd set me up with a four-day split, which...probably is not ideal for someone as close to beginner as me). But it works, and even if I seriously doubt it's the split that's working, I'm not going to argue with touching my toes.
Another nice thing is that first day, I found out that I definitely qualify as "decent" according to this T-nation article. T-nation is vastly annoying, but often has really good information, and I've long considered that article a good set of goals for me. While I have trouble with full pushups and pullups, my deadlift, bench, and overhead press were all good. (The squat has range-of-motion issues, but I'm pretty sure that I could handle the weight.) The pushups and pullups are probably more "how to move" issues than "not strong enough" issues.
I have no idea if this would apply to anyone else, but I know there are others who can't touch toes, and maybe this information will help!
