5 tips to help improve your general flexibility (plus a video!) - Dance Saturday

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,

As I mentioned in my Dance Saturday post last week, I will be taking a short break from my All about:____ series today and post something a little bit different. Don't worry, the series will return next week but today, I thought it would be interesting to write about 5 ways you can improve your general flexibility. Whether you're a dancer, gymnast, someone who likes yoga or someone who wants to become more flexible, these tips will definitely help you! I hope you enjoy this post!

• My first tip, really helps to increase the stretch in the back of your legs and your calves. When you go down on one knee from a lunge position and you lean back so that your front leg is straight, in order to increase the stretch, you need to place one arm underneath your front leg and flex your front foot. This makes sure that you can feel the tension in the back of your leg, which shows that you're stretching it properly. If you do this often, when you do your front splits you'll be able to go down further. I got this tip from Anna McNulty and it really helps.

• My second tip that I think really helps to improve your flexibility, is when you go into a half split position and your front leg is bent towards you, you must ensure that your front leg isn't fully bent in. I learnt this tip from my sister, when we were doing a workout late last week. I kept doing this stretch with my leg fully bent in and I didn't feel the stretch at all. My sister said it was because you need to have your front leg at a right angle. This helps to stretch out your hamstrings a lot better and I did find that it helped improve my splits.

• For me personally, the stretch that I've always struggled to do is the pike. This is probally because I find it quite painful and I do often struggle to get my face fully down to my knees. However, to loosen the tension in the back of my legs, when I put them out in front of me, I always flex my feet first. Like in my first tip, this allows me to stretch out the back back of my legs and this helps me to go down further when I try to do the full pike position.

• The next key stretch that I think helps stretch out your back is the seal stretch. If you do this stretch on a regular basis, then you will see significant changes in your back flexibility. You'll find it a lot easier to do back bends and tricks that need you to be more flexibile in your back. Just ensure that you're trying to push your hips to the ground, or you won't really feel the stretch.

• My last tip, helps to stretch out your back and your shoulders more. After you go into a seal stretch, it's a good idea to go backwards into a shoulder stretch. This helps to release tension in your back after you do the seal strech because you're reversing the movement. It's also important that you slowly walk your hands forward when you do the shoulder stretch because it increases the stretch in your back and loosens up your shoulders. This also helps to make your arms more flexibile when you do things like back bends and needles. 

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I hope you found my tips and explanations helpful!

Have you got any other flexibility tips? Do you think that you are flexible? Let me know in the comments below and I'll be sure to reply to them. I ♡ hearing from you!

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See you next time,

Bye,

XOX, Juliette

P.S Next week, continuing with my All about:____ series, I will be talking about the well-known dancer from the past, Fred Astaire! 

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