How to Use a Stretching Cage to Increase Flexibility
To watch the full video, click here: https://youtu.be/CJIFNYS-z2k
Coaches athletes what’s happening Michael Hughes here from Gymnazo Edu to do a follow up video on our actual most popular video on our channel to date, the true stretch, and how to use this piece of equipment, this piece of equipment is, well, it’s pretty awesome to be quite frank with you, but most people do not understand it, they don’t know how to use it. And that certainly was me 17 plus years ago, when I started out as a trainer, I’ve actually had two of these in the gym that I was at Bally Total Fitness, I think they’ve gone bankrupt at this particular point. But I actually did Mike, I actually told my clients don’t use this please, I can, I can stretch you better, I can put you on a table. And, you know, I can give you you know, some some cooler stretches I learned back in my Bachelor’s of Kinesiology, you know, that are really, really awesome. Those are not those statements were not true. By any means. Those statements were a fear I had, I had this gap in knowledge about this piece of equipment and whatever they had a gap in knowledge is functional, three dimensional movement, I didn’t understand the body’s complexities at the particular time I thought was very linear. So I told him not to use it, because I didn’t know how to how to tell them how to use it. So that’s what a lot of people are seeing in the gyms or the facilities that these route, but I want to show you how to use it, that’s what I’m gonna be focusing on today is how do you actually use this thing. And then to open up the huge amount of possibilities that this cage offers. This cage offers essentially an amazing environment for functional positioning to build flexibility and stability. I call that movability. And what I’m going to do is I’m gonna kind of tell you a quick analogy, right, if you have a rocking chair in the back of a truck, you know how many ropes would you want to tie that thing down, you know, to make it as stable as you can, right you want to use as many offices you can write what’s the least amount, but a ropes that you could use, but to really make it three dimensionally stable, so it doesn’t slide forward and back doesn’t slide left to right, and it doesn’t rock and roll as the as the trackpad moves, right? Well, you don’t want to use four different ropes. And that’s a cool thing. So we have four different ropes on our body, we have one right here, our right foot, we have another here, our left foot, and we have our right hand and we have our left hand when we can have four points of contact, or four points of stability 1234, we can therefore isolate out a muscle and really lengthen it. And with lengthening it, we can therefore load it. And when we can load it, we can neurologically activate it perceptively activate it. And then when we can do that, we’ve essentially taken the bow and arrow and pulled the bow back. What can you therefore do now, if you take that rubber band right and pull it back that bow back? What can you do, you have essentially potential energy. And then from that potential energy, you can therefore create kinetic energy, power, strength, etc, etc. But if we can’t pull that bow back, if we don’t have the mobility, the flexibility in our connective tissue and joints, you can’t really expect to get the power, and even just the coordination or even just the ability to move like your body can. So that’s why this tool is so awesome. On this piece of equipment is something that we actually have 19 of these guys at this particular point. So you may have seen what the hell you want do a night tinnitus things? Well, we want every single person in our group training to have this for warmth and cooldown. So that’s what we did we spent the investment on it, and honestly, it is worth every penny. For those comments out there. They’re going like what are you gonna do with $2,300? On this? I’m telling you know what? It’s Yes. Can you use other things? Can we use this mobility? Of course we can. Of course we can. But is this better? Yes, this is like the Rolls Royce. This is, this is like the Tesla plaid Model S i This is this is the creme de la creme. But again, if you don’t know how to drive the thing, it’s kind of, well, a lot of money. So four points of contact. That’s what we want. Why want four points of contact, because four points of contact allows our body to feel comfortable, feels feel stable, feel in control, and therefore we do not have to fight for flexibility. If you’ve ever done a yoga class, if you’re on any sort of stretching class, to hold a position and stretch and get into that motion, you’re actually fighting gravity, ground reaction forces mass and momentum and the spin of this earth right you have to balance yourself to get that done. Well can you get the best stretch when you’re trying to hold on and contract muscles and balance yourself while trying to lengthen a piece of tissue? The answer is simply no. Is it good? Yeah, it’s definitely good. Not saying it’s not good, but this is better. So I’m going to show you a quick way to kind of think about movement here right and I’m going to show you a quad stretch. So I have this little pad here. Just keep it kind of cozy for that for that knee as I drive down and put a knee pad on here I got one point of contact to point on I’ve even have a point of contact back there with my foot is Here’s another a third or fourth in a sense. And then fourth, or fifth, if you want to kind of look at that, that way, I’m gonna go after a quad hip flexor, even anterior core, even anterior ribcage stretch and shows that the true train chain reaction that I get with this particular strategy of using this particular tool. So first of all, I’m going to drive my knee into the pad, I’m quitting active tension within my body, what does active tension really mean? I’m taking my muscle tissue and basically doing this before I actually stretch it. So what I’m doing with my sweatshirt here is I’m actually pulling down and pulling up. So if I push my knees down into that pad, and lift my ribcage up, I really essentially haven’t really moved my body in an age relation, I’ve just stretched it out in its own self using my own muscle potential to do so I already feel a quad stretch, I already feel a bit of a hip flexor stretch, I already feel a bit of a core stretch. Now from there, I can drive my front knee forward. And this is what four points of contact gives me, I can now use other body parts like my left knee here to drive the stretch, and I’m doing a anterior angulation or forward drive that really lengthens my front quad, my front hip on the side and my front core. Well, what if I want to hold that position, you know, hold that position in front of me, I’m getting a good, let’s call it 80% Stretch. Now I can hold that position and easily drive my pelvis now not my pneumo on my pelvis, left and right. And essentially what I’m doing is I’m taking my tissue and lengthening it, driving it forward on one side, or driving it forward on the other side. And now going left and right with that tissue, am I getting a better lengthening as my point A and point B getting further away? The answer is yes. Is that going to be a better potential stretch? Absolutely. So now I can do the same thing with with my pelvis, I can drive my pelvis to the right and left as I do. So am I getting a different and more centrally deeper stretch? The answer is yes, I’m doing that with my shirt here. And then basically spinning it and spinning it. And that allows to get a greater potential stretching my core going this way, but a better potential stretch in my hip going the opposite way. Or you get the idea of what I’m talking about, right our body, and our tissues can move in three planes of motion, that is not an opinion, that is the fact. So if we’re going to try to lengthen it as much as possible to get the most potential out of our connective tissue to be that bow and arrow that I’m going to want to lengthen it in all the ways that it possibly can, of course pain three, of course, not overdoing the joint, of course, making sure that we find the limits of that particular athlete or yourself right, all those things are are givens. So I can move in a position and honestly, I can’t get that quad stretch, I can’t get that hip flexor stretch by just doing this. Right, I just it’s just not the same. Is this an okay stretch? Of course it is. But it’s not going to be the same because I have essentially ground reaction forces, I have that pad pushing up, my proprioceptive system is being authentically stretched. For this one, my foot is essentially not connected to anything, my knee is not connected to anything. So my proprioceptors are not being or my movement nerves call it muscle memory, if you want to, are not being appropriately stretched, therefore the integrity of that stretch has gotten less, maybe you don’t care. But honestly, I’m looking for every inch I can to make sure I can spend as little time as possible stretching or strength training or doing any sort of conditioning in a facility so I can live my life outside of the facility. So I want to maximize and it doesn’t really take a whole lot just takes a little bit more thought. So that’s a way to think about how to do a quad stretch. Well what about like a good old fashioned, just chest stretch? Well, again, I want four points of contact, I’m gonna split my feet apart, I’m gonna grab my left hand way back here, I’m gonna get my right hand right up here. So I got four points of contact I brought. Let me switch with my feet. Actually, I’m going to bring this foot forward because now I’ve drawn the pelvis that direction. And that as you can see, look at my jacket. When I bring my pelvis this way. You see the lines of tension, get even more extreme. So you can already see the fascial lines representing here by my jacket, increasing all the way into my chest. So I get my four points contract and feel very, very stable. I can now drive my pelvis away and I’m just doing a pelvic driver as we like to call it to get a good transverse plane or rotational stretch through my not only my core, but into my pec and even into my anterior shoulder and even bicep. Like I can hold that rotation and then drive my body forward and backing much more of an anterior sagittal plane stretch. And I can hold even forward holding transverse plane holding sagittal plane and driving frontal plane.
Oh right there, money stretch right there right across the pack feeling awesome. Getting into those little spots. Now what I love about this is we can also build strengthening or stability in the joints at our end range. Functional stretch limitation, basically saying we can build strength at a very far point of flexibility. So I can actually go into a rotational plane stretch into a forward stretch into a lateral stretch. And then I can say isometrically, contract, pull Mashi, pulling that bar towards me, I can build that isometric strength, and therefore increase my functional range of usable motion, right? Because not only do I have flexibility back there, but now I have strength back there through an isometric muscle contraction. It teaches my body a whole lot of how I can increase my functional range of motion. All right there feeling good, maybe 10. Second, hold 15 second, hold, back off the pelvis back off the trunk and then release the arm. And not only does that arm field loosey goosey, but it feels in control in that newfound range of motion. So again, just a quick little recap on the previous video of how to really use this machine. Oh, I said the word machine, it’s not a machine, there is no moving parts. It’s a tool. It’s a piece of equipment. Long story short, how you can use this and how you can make the best of this piece of equipment. If you want to misrepresent any more stretches or a whole series instructions, put them in the comments below. I’d love to go through a whole series and an updated version of how to use this amazing piece of equipment feel free to throw the like button on there really appreciate it kind of spreads the word about this particular content. We’re trying to uplift the industry of movement, training and conditioning. And feel free to subscribe hit the notification bell because we got a lot more videos coming out. Appreciate your watching. I’ll see you guys next time.
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