How to Achieve Peak Performance: Balance Strength and Flexibility

Stop stretching before your workout! Do this instead.

Stop stretching before your workout! Do this instead.

Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash

Many yoga practitioners tell me their main goal is to increase flexibility. They are often ashamed of their poor range of motion, or feel guilty they don’t do more stretching. They’re confused when I say the goals of my yoga class are to link breath and movement, increase proprioception, and learn to self-regulate both on and off the mat. They’re surprised when I tell them, this yoga class won’t be about how deep we can go into our flexibility. It’ll be all about range of motion instead.

Modern yoga has this reputation of being about effortless contortions, impossible binds, and mind-boggling stretches. But is this level of flexibility really a health ideal we should strive for?

The flexibility–usability tradeoff is a design principle maintaining that, as the flexibility of a system increases, its usability decreases.

For this reason, muscle “stiffness” is actually something most athletes aspire to!

Let…