hey everyone Daniel vernal for fitness a fake use are you the type of person that has
never been able to touch your toes I use someone that's constantly stretching your hamstrings but
they never get more flexible they always remain tight in this video I'm going to teach you how to
permanently be able to touch your toes and beyond having permanent increases in your flexibility
before I show you how to forever be able to touch your toes and beyond we need to understand what
affects our ability to reach the ground the two key areas of restriction of the calves and
the hamstrings the calves cost both the ankle and the knee joint when bending forward if the
calves are tight movement will also be limited the hamstrings cross both the hip and the knee so when
you're flexing forwards the hamstrings are heavily stretched one of the biggest reasons which will
determine if you can or can't touch the ground is pelvis position as the hamstrings attached
at the hip if the pelvis is anteriorly tilted to begin with the hamstrings are already on stretch
this severely limits your range of motion he is me doing a toe reach with an anterior pelvic tilt I
can only get to about mid shin height and it feels like my hamstrings are about to tear this is legit
I'm not faking this this is literally as far as I can go now let's take a look when I simply do
a posterior pelvic tilt I haven't stretched I haven't done anything between these two attempts
and you can see that I can get my hands to the floor because my hamstrings aren't starting at a
length in position to begin with we need to teach our body to start and remain posteriorly tilted at
the pelvis when we're reaching towards the ground if we can master just this alone we'll be able
to reach closer towards the ground without even stretching our hamstrings I want you to start this
routine by foam rolling the calf find tender areas and spend at least two minutes self massaging the
calf you can work up and down side to side or even sustained pressure whilst moving the ankle through
a full range of motion by foam rolling we down regulate the brains perception of stretch which
will allow us to move further in the exercises we're about to do I want to teach you a P and F
or contract relax stretching protocol for the cuff on a single leg keep the knee extended straight
and allow the heel to drop towards the ground stretching this position passively for one minute
after one minute press the ball of the foot into the ground without moving you want to
squeeze really hard staying in an isometric position for 10 seconds after squeezing for
10 seconds slowly relax the tension allowing the foot to drop further towards the ground
now from here actively draw the ankle upwards contracting hard the front of
your shin for 10 seconds cramping may be experienced and this is what we
want we want to teach our body this range of motion is safe and that we have the strength
to handle it after 10 seconds of driving the ankle upwards relax for another minute
and then exit the stretch repeating on both sides remember earlier we talked about the impact of
pelvis position on range of motion we want to teach our body how to control posterior pelvic
tilt a highly effective way of doing this is using a front plank with an exaggerated posterior pelvic
tilt halt squeeze the glutes as hard as you can legs remain straight breathing forcefully into
your stomach don't just chill in this position really squeeze hard for the best results hold
for 30 to 45 seconds now we are going to tie in some hip flexor strength with lumbo-pelvic
control teaching our body it's okay to flex the hip while lengthening the posterior leg
muscles start with by flattening your lower back against the ground then extend your knees straight
pointing your ankle upwards I want you to do 10 reps with each one trying to flex the hip as high
as possible dynamically and then on the tenth rep holding at the end range of motion for 10
seconds of course repeating on both sides lastly two eccentric lis lengthen both the calf and the
hamstring and to further solidify our strength at an extended range of motion an effective drill is
to use both a straight and a bent single leg deadlift it's important to do both straight
and bent legs because each will emphasize the hamstring lengthening that either the hip or
the knee doing this exercise is far superior to static stretching as we are teaching the body to
get strong at long muscle lengths which will make reaching your toes a breeze with this one guys 5
slow reps with a pause at the bottom for both a straight and the bent leg variation do so on
both legs I want you to repeat everything again except for the foam rolling we've already done
that part just go through the stretches and the range of motion exercises now comes the fun part
let's play around with these inchworm variations to solidify our body working at extended muscle
lengths as well as solidifying that lumber pelvic control that we can permanently be able to touch
our toes and beyond lastly as we have been doing a fair bit of forward bending and flexion of the
spine it's healthy to decompress by doing some spinal extensions your back will thank me for
it awesome guys that's the whole sequence I want you to retest your hamstring flexibility how'd you
go did you get more mobile with this routine it's still having tightness one thing that I
didn't cover in this video is the involvement of the sciatic nerve down the back of the leg
if you're still feeling tightness you need a different approach to increasing your mobility
and I'll cover that in a separate video as you can see from this video it's important that you
choose the correct exercises and approach to address your individual weaknesses guys take
the guesswork out of your training and start training in an optimal way to reach your goals
as fast as possible for more information visit Fitness FAQ TV to master your body