The Secret to Lifelong Flexibility

For years, the term “muscle bound” has developed a stigma as it has been thrown around in the athletics and sports world. It is the result of a myth that has circulated in locker rooms that “if you do high intensity strength training you will become so muscle bound that you can’t be effective in certain sports” therefore it must be avoided.

In some sports, more emphasis is place on stretching exclusively for increased flexibility than participating in a supervised high intensity strength training program which are more or less avoided.

I agree that flexibility is certainly a key component of physical fitness, however I have always wondered why coaches and trainers in basketball, baseball, swimming, golf, soccer, and track & field still fall back on the old myth that high intensity strength training will make the players too muscle bound and will hinder the athlete’s performance. Some of these coaches and trainers don’t even give high intensity strength training a chance. Sure, you will see high intensity strength training in most of the football and wrestling programs, but the majority other sports just have not made the same investment and I am concerned. What I have seen are individual athletes in these respective sports going “rogue” out on their own to investigate high intensity strength training and ultimately making investments in their personal physical fitness which pays “high dividends”.

We can all agree that children are naturally flexible but have little strength. When we mature, especially in our joints and muscles, most of us will be ready to start a high intensity strength training program. Flexibility referred to a “range of motion of a joint” is based on several factors:

Joint Geometry

Current muscular strength

Subcutaneous body fat

Intra-cellular fat

When I was at Nautilus along side Arthur Jones, he proved in many of extensive and expensive studies that high intensity strength training not only increases muscular strength but also flexibility in the joints. This is because not only do the muscles get stronger and more durable, the ligaments and tendons which connect the muscles to the bones are also strengthened by high intensity strength training and (2) the potential for serious injuries is reduced. This increase in strength and durability by high intensity strength training cannot be achieved by just stretching the muscles, ligaments, and tendons as a form of exercise. Rather, high intensity strength training properly performed must be part of a regular exercise program.

The value of high intensity strength training remains to this day underestimated. However, if we all understood the value of high intensity strength training and performed Proper Strength Training most of our lives, we would have the potential to remain strong and flexible and reduce the risk of injury.

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