Dear Matt,

I keep seeing videos on YouTube saying that if you’re not flexible in various positions, it’s due to a lack of strength. Care to weigh in on this? It doesn’t sound right to me.

Dao Ting Tomas

Dear Dao,

Back in 1999, when I was still in California, a 260- pound flabby guy who had already lost 30 pounds, came to my martial arts studio to learn catch wrestling from me. This was his first session and after I taught him how to do Hindu squats and pushups (as featured in Combat Conditioning), which he wasn’t good at, he got into a back bridge and was able to immediately put his nose on the mat. He was so limber that I sensed he could probably put his chin on the mat as well, so I suggested this to him to see if he could do it – and to everyone’s amazement, he did.

He didn’t even break a sweat getting into this position, and that’s when I noted the position of his feet in the bridge. His wrestling shoes were under his middle thoracic vertebrae, and he looked so dadgum comfortable there that I advised him to see if he could walk his feet toward the back of his head.

Without missing a beat, he began moving in that direction. I exclaimed, “I wonder if you can touch your heels to the back of your head,” something I had only coached one other person to do – and that was a 10-year old boy named Zack, who was fit, but many pubic hairs away from being a strongman.

My new student proved he could do it; putting his heels on his noggin was a cinch. More importantly, although this man was naturally limber, he was far from what I would call strong.

Key point: Flexibility has much more to do with your nervous system than it does a lack or an abundance of strength.

There are plenty of mighty strong men and women who are not flexible; and many limber people who are not strong. Ideally though, in my whirld, you continually move toward greater strength and suppleness.

I have also watched plenty of YouTube videos where someone, in one session, added weights to a stretch and subsequently had an immediate upgrade in mobility.

Does this mean that the person stretching got stronger during the exercise itself, or in less than a minute?

I think not.

You gain flexibility by training your sinews and your nervous system to go where it was previously afraid of going.

Getting stronger throughout a greater range of motion is wonderful, but an imaginary correlation between flexibility being primarily about strength isn’t reality; the idea is as faulty as a three-and-a-half dollar bill.

Matt Furey

Note: Want to double your flexibility overnight? Then click here.

MattFurey.com