Stretching Hamstrings: Personal Trainer vs. Yoga Teacher (we're both right!)

so like life in general for a 40 plus year old person it's generally everything's tight so this is how to want do one specific thing and this is for your hand strings and these are the things that I like to have people do when I'm training them and I called in the the in-house yoga expert to Help Me Maybe with some of my with my KS and if she can I'm going to critique him and yell at him and if she can offer up if she can offer modifications for people because that's what she's really good at um and so I like to get people right into things and she would take it a different approach so here we're going to start with I'm actually going to have you start standing at the back of mat okay so I can yell at you like that this is the top of my mou yeah you're not going to I hope you're not M be jeez I'm just going to have you take one foot out in front of you take one foot directly behind that foot in one straight line and then I just want you to take this foot out just a couple inches okay so take that back foot out a little bit you're simply going to turn your body to face the front of the room like this take your arms over your head you're going to keep your knee stiff and locked and you're just going to roll over slowly down and grab your ankle Shin thigh whatever is accessible if none of that's accessible then just use your body weight and let your head just fall out and try not to hold tension anywhere and fall into this deep hamstring stretch now do you have any modifications for this stretch something that you would do different oh yeah okay oh do it completely no I'm just kidding um you w want to use blocks well if they're accessible also just trying to make sure that it's accessible to people who don't have props well you can actually use like even books or something you just need a little bit of a lift um and and maybe to come into it with your hands this way is a good side your hands on your hips makes it a little easier because you really want to square your you put your heads upon your hips exactly you want to square your hips draw the belly in as you fold have a long spine and then find your prop if you're using it because it gives you a little bit of a lift yep and if you don't if you just just throw it out there if you don't have a prop the prop could simply be your your shin or your sorry but the issue is that for a lot of people it's going to be hard to fully straighten their front leg especially if they have long legs right so you keep a little softness in your leg and keep yourself lifted Here length it out draw the Bellion squeeze your thighs and hips towards each other and then as you exhale fold leading with your chest so you're getting this very deep hamstring stretch in the right leg this is called pyramid pose so if you want to come back up you bring your hands to your hips I'm just laughing to myself about the way I describe it and the way you describe it it's actually cool because I think that Mike's approach is good for B mine's like the guy athletic like let's get into it don't have time for like fold over bend your legs I don't have time for small top and then and then what I would do to come out of it is I would just roll back up and I would just put one foot to match the other foot and then I would just switch sides same thing I would turn my body to face forward and then I I fold forward and I would let my hands fall even if they can't touch anything except up here I would still keep my knee locked and eventually sink all the way into it an add-on to this would be you can rotate your fingertips back and walk them back behind you or if they're in front of you you can flex your front foot you can draw your toes back um you could even take like a wider stance of pyramid with your back leg back even further um just some different ideas yep okay stretch so that's stretch number one tire back SS here we'll call it pyramid um I'll call it just put your leg in front of you and bend over forward no but you want to make sure you square your hips off and that close yes that's exactly what I said want to take your body facing forward before you start your downward path yeah and you're right having your arms lifted does allow you to square forward it just it makes people a lot of time create a lot of tension in their neck control Bo you to be careful with that y understood okay um the next one I'm sure you're going to you're going to have your whole the whole yoga terminology thing going wow big time for this one so move move to the back your map I'm just going to show people I need to do it on the M real where at okay so I like to have people just come from on their hands and knees to just sitting up on their knees and then just swinging out I don't care if it looks good or doesn't look good just to get their leg out in front of them and some way shape or form a lot of people have a very difficult time with this at this point Okay this may be a lot on your knee you would want to fold this over or just be on a soft surface um but all I tell people in this pose before they do anything is simply take their toe and point it toward their face and at that point the back of your leg ignites okay now if you can do that and you can kind of lean into to it a little bit and reach forward in some cases grabbing a toe and pull it back or just keep leaning forward like this and I'm again I'm talking to the person who is not flexible and who doesn't understand at all yoga terminology okay so it's it's as simple as you're on your hands and knees you've paded this knee potentially or you're on a tall or soft surface like the gym side take your leg out in front of you point your toe toward your face lean over and sink into it and that destroys this whole area back here it turns on yeah in a big way okay so it's basically a half split and it's also one of my favorite hsh so now why don't you show what you would do but do you ever put your dirty sneakers on my yoga M you're going to have a real problem so I would I would also instruct it from table if someone's really tight or new it but normally what I would do in a class maybe is when we're in a fold and we have our hands maybe on blocks you would step your leg back into a lunge you would make sure your knees over your ankle or behind it and then you would slowly lower your back knee see I have this big diagonal here so I'm also stretching my hip flexors which I don't know if Mike was doing that as much and then you would lengthen out your spine inhale and as you exhale draw your hips back and flex your foots you're getting that Flex he was talking about you can maybe reach for your toes draw them back lean with your chest long spine exhale chest to Shin deep deep hamstring stretch this is your half s split um you can have your hands like this um or you can even work into a full split like this is BR back even if you don't have a full split which this is my tighter side I can use a block underneath rotate my left hip forward set up nice and tall I just picture like Bob deeply Str picture my client Bob Austin watching this video god um like no guy I know just wanted to throw it careful watch the mic oh whoopsie um but if you were in table like Mike said you're in table and then you're going to bring your foot in front just make sure that air knees over your ankle or behind it but the thing is that limits people there is their back hit in the stretch yeah but the way I'm it's not just a hamstring Str right well I'm doing it though let me let me replace you real quick let me get that so I wanted to do a split on the other side to even up so like I'm I'm having kind of people start here and even if they're totally just on their knees and sitting sitting up like this just take your foot out in front of yeah that's it like I'm just trying to go super simple as little direction as possible to get people to feel this insane stretch okay so that's two approaches you know to the same thing y um my other go-to favorite thing to do and I'm going to have to stand on Eric do matad again she can sit on my with shoes we'll clean Flor we'll clean it with very Levy clean cleanable material for for here so what I like to have people do is take their feet out wide okay and literally just hinge at the waist to hear that crack yeah I kid and reach forward or reach back here or reach back here and lean forward into your toes a little bit and just let your head relax and let the weight of your upper body pull now this isn't going to be super targeted on the middle of your hamstrings but it's going to be all back here and you're going to really really feel it and I like to have people just sit and hang here for I don't know 20 to 30 seconds so and then to come out of it to curl back up and then get their legs back in and be on the way so I like how you said to lean forward in your feet because if you don't then you're hyperextending you're pressing your knees back too far but also you should probably be a little bit p and toed here for your balance any fold is going to stretch your hamstrings but a wide leg of fold is stretching them a little deeper and then you would find the floor and reach where you want to reach and elbows out and come into that fold right you can also then add a little something to it which I know you do these too Mike is just a side lunge yeah is deeply getting into your inner um legs hamstring that is one of the stranger feelings of your foot flat sending your weight back into your left heel even Reaching Your Hands away there's so many different add-ons to everything even like he was saying when you come into your fold you could clasp your hands behind you if you want to get a shoulder stretch in um and when you come up you can work in like this heel toe heel toe heel toe and you work your foot um flexibility Mobility ankles all that so that's one of my favorite Vamp string stretches too cool I want pull that pull that okay um to just build on what you just said with that other variation is if I'm here I'll typically have people kind of I'll have people kind of rock back and forth just a little bit just to loosen things up okay and again this is this is hamstrings but it's a little bit different of what's going on with the stretch it's it's very aggressive and it's very strange dealer so then I as a not that flexible person would take my elbow to my knee and then lean into it and potentially just scoot this leg out a little wider until I feel EX extreme stretch in here and I would put my leg up like that yeah that's a very deep stretch um and then hold on hold on and then I'm excited can you tell I would simply just have people however it's accessible to them most people are kind of up here somewhere I would have them lean into the other side and then I like to do it like this either like this or you can you know you can have your arms out like this okay and that's another one of my favorites I like it so the other thing was if you're in a fold spr and you're folding down you can walk your hands to one side left hand on top of right here I'm going to shift my weight forward and my feet lengthen out my back and full chest to Shin but then I can take it a step further by just pulling my left hip slightly away from my right heel and I'm getting all into my right leg here so I do the same to the left take right fingertips on top of left shift my weight forward lengthen out fold as I exhale and then gently pull my right hip away from my left heel getting into my left leg that makes sense yeah back to Center and come out okay and then heel out and heel help and again I'm deliberately doing this with sneakers on so that people can see that people get freaked out sometimes by the thought that they have to take their shoes off to do yoga and you just don't have to if you don't want to or don't feel comfortable doing it or if you just don't have time for the outfit change like for me often I'll do yoga stuff in the middle of when I'm doing weightlifting and stuff like that I just don't have time to do the the removal so I kind of dress appropriately for all different scenarios lately I've been keeping my socks on but I'm just sliding everywhere stinks either I'm going b or I'm going with sakers on socks Mak it to slipp okay I have another good stretch for you if you want to see it well I have another one too okay you go first and it's my last one actually um and it's just me on my back okay with a strap now this is a yoga strap specifically um you can do this demo B show you with anything like like a long towel a towel work tshirt a scarf a t-shirt um I I don't think a tie would work but you get what I saying like something that's just tie would work sort of long like this and what I like to do is I like to take the strap put it about two or three inches below my toes I'm just laying back it should be at the base of the ball of your foot actually or two or three inch below your toe so the same thing um no a little lower no I like it right here cuz I like to pull my toes out so then I like to take this thing and wrap it around my hands so I can get really good pull and I'm flat on my back and I'm just keeping my leg straight and I'm pulling it to the point where it's clearly obvious that it's not going to go any further than this and the more I pull on the front of my toes the deeper the stretch or the more I pull it higher the deeper of the stretch yep so I like to hang here for 15 20 30 seconds and then to come out of it I just sit up and swap it out and then just come back like this and this to me is very accessible to most people um I had a client come here this past week who had double knee replacement and couldn't get to her back to do a yoga pose ever and I had her do this for the very first time I bet she loved it too and she loved it yeah okay yes um okay so let's go just do want this side yeah so what I do when I instruct the the leg strap stretches is um we start with our soles of our feet on the floor so you don't have to sit up or anything my hair is going to drive me nuts to pull out um so you would take the strap around oh also real quick truth be told I wore sneakers because I been running so much that might oh God all right check this out no one cares they should not be publicly Vis no one cares okay so now my hips are aligned better so I'm going to draw my leg back then I'm going to slide my left leg down so now I have this assisted split basically and I'm holding the strap with both hands but I'm holding it together I'm going to take a breath in I feel like I need like the hand you do that yeah but but the one thing to always say is you're deepening your stretch on the exhale is when you would pull in and the best part about about this hamstring stretch is you can support your hip down control it and bring your leg out to a controlled straddle one in which you're not rolling over you're drawing your foot up to your face that's one version holding there or you could do this intense version where I'm going to switch hands grab the strap with my left hand bring my right arm out to the side and guide my leg over holy moly is this a deep outer leg shifts here your IT band stretch pressing the heel away keeping my shouldered out you can also get into like a half happy baby or something like that so you can do that with both sides again starting so you don't never have to sit up or anything but yeah I could see how this is hard for some people to get the strap around their foot without sitting yeah so people if people if people are very overweight and like have quote unquote stuff in the way I think people be people have things that are inaccessible to them for reasons why I would never thought before training a lot of different attacks um whether it's pre-existing injuries or being overweight or whatever there's a number of reasons why um something very simple um can go long way and for for me to instruct it the way I do and try to make it as accessible you got very limited um capabilities and ability to make sure that everybody can get into it you can also do this without a strap you can lift your leg up and yeah I that lift your head and shoulders up and clasp your hands behind and then just and then just walk your leg closer it's one of those things I had a I had a person who come over here and try to do happy baby and I just jumped into this yoga POS that's what you just did you just jumped into like a single leg straight up to the sky thing I'm not even like bad no I know but that's like a lot of people can't even get their leg like off the ground like let alone straight up yeah they get tight so yeah I've been moving on my mat for 10 years so teaching for 10 years yeah it's been longer than before that yeah so um okay that was good that's one those are one of my favorite I got one more one more a new one I've been doing I think you're going to love it you're going to want to try it but you got to move over there okay so you come into the school hands and knees whoops I keep hitting the microphone over and over again I literally knocked it over this time Mike's going yell it nice okay so we're in table I'm going to slide my right foot out this is actually called gate pose when your foot is in line with your knee but I'm going to stay here I'm going to Flex my right foot and then I'm going to sink my hips back like almost like I'm going into childh reach my arms forward huge huge leg stretch and then very similar to what you were doing when we were squatting down and then coming forward I could flatten my foot take it again like that and here's the other side would be flexing and then drawing back this is actually hurting the top top of my foot because my foot is off the mat but same thing you can double up your mat underneath your knee for a cushion wait like this if you're on a mat or you can put a little blank Out Underneath so I think we did what five hring stres yep definitely a really good amount for people to at least get into it so in the very near future what we'll do is we'll put out a very specific hair strring class people can follow it but this is more of an instructional Insight kind of thing from from the perspective of someone who's more a personal trainer and less uh a yoga instructor even though I am certified I still teach it more like a personal share would teach it and to hear the same CS come from a yoga teacher I think it's just good set for everybody so take whatever you can from it any folds anytime you fold your body over you're stretching your hamstrings you just want to do it safely keep your knees bent a little bit yep so next time out let's do um a lot of people complain about their hipss I even have guys complaining about their hips um everyone's complaining about hips so next stand at the wall do some well we'll get into that so hopefully you enjoy this let us know um any questions and uh see you next time sock I was going to make fun be to that lat thank you you got to keep my ma it's so