Tuesday tightness - more power to the stretches

"Right, okay, right that's it!!"... I am going to go stretch crazy and from here on, I could well be found randomly at any time stretching. My knee has not responded at all well to my running on it, and was better for rolling and stretching yesterday before deciding to make it's big protest felt this morning. It used to be the case that I would go through a stretch routine a couple of times a day when I was rowing, then somewhere along the way I fell out of the habit.

Looking back on it the drop in stretching came initially when I managed to exacerbate a calve injury by over doing it, and then was compounded by reading those articles decrying certain forms of stretching before exercise (seems I must have subconsciously read it as "all stretching is bad" - dumbo!).

I will be bendier than a bendy Yoga person - ahem, perhaps not that bendy I am a lanky 6ft2 after all
"Silhouette Girls Doing Yoga" - Image courtesy of sattva / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

So I am just going to stretch until I get all bendy again and hope that my knee decides shut up with the pain when it has everything around it super loose. I have to say that the very first time I went through my old routine again this morning I could feel tightness and pulling where I don't ever recall feeling any, which of course tells me something pretty major. My quads were like rocks and took the longest time to ease off under tension and I used to have great mobility through that stretch (it used to be the back of leg stretch that would leave me whimpering). Somewhere along the way an adaptation for the worse has happened and I need to put it right.

In a timely twist of fate an excellent blog that I read "50after40" posted a great video called 'Hip workout details and my first video' - which for a first ever video outing was awesome and contains some great moves that I hope to build into an expanded stretching / strengthening regimen. I reccomend you go take a look and enjoy the rock out to the soundtrack too :-)

Overcast, breezy, persistent rain, and a complete reverse of yesterdays weather. Now where is a quiet spot in the office I can go stretch?

Note - I should of course once again heed my own previous advice - 'Joys of stretch' - if I was so wise back in July 2011 what happened?