Before starting your weight lifting program, make sure you have sufficient flexibility. Unless you can move your limbs through a full range of motion, you won’t be able to lift heavy weights with proper form. Prepare yourself to bulk up by following a good regimen of stretching exercises. Stick with a general-purpose stretching routine during your bulking phase.
Flexibility doesn’t mean you have to flop around like a wet piece of spaghetti. It means you can apply your strength whenever and wherever you need it, without the limitations imposed by tight muscles and bad joints. If you can move your limbs, neck, extremities, and core into the same positions that an active child or adolescent is able to assume, then you are sufficiently flexible. If your range of motion is limited, work on some stretching exercises.
Why flexibility is important for strength training
Two words: injury prevention.
You’re only as strong as your weakest link. Compound exercises stress these weak links. Consequently, they strengthen your body as a unit, rather than as a collection of unrelated parts.
If you lack flexibility, you run the risk of injury. The weight of a heavily-loaded barbell forcibly increases your range of motion. Pushed far enough, this causes injury; weight-assisted stretching is dangerous.
The adaptation principle teaches us that your body only accommodates the movements you train for. You can think of this as the “use it or lose it” principle. When your progress begins to stall, the importance of flexibility increases. Since compound movements stress your weak link, you’ll injure yourself if flexibility isn’t sufficient when the weights get very heavy. If this happens, your bulking phase will be over before it had a chance to begin; you’ll be unable to complete the most productive part of your weight lifting program.
Flexibility for strength training
Heavy, prolonged weight lifting is hard on your body. Inflexibility makes it doubly so. For people with flexibility problems, bench pressing wreaks havoc on the shoulders, squats are notoriously hard on the knees, and virtually everything hurts the lower back.
As a weight lifter, you don’t need the same sort of flexibility training used by ballet dancers or gymnasts. Rather, you need to insure that you can move effortlessly through a full range of motion on the weight lifting techniques that are part of your bulking routine.
Here are some trouble spots for weight lifters:
- Shoulders. Shoulder problems are common among weight lifters. The act of relaxing in the bottom position of a bench press is the major culprit. But flyes and dips can also do damage. The shoulder joints are held together by several small muscles; flexibility problems during a lift will cause the joint to separate, resulting in a serious, debilitating injury. Relaxing while performing shrugs, deadlifts, or weighted pull-ups is also to be avoided; this will pull the joint apart. You will be unable to reach your full potential on the overhead press if your shoulder flexibility is inadequate.
- Hips. Do squats lead to injury? The answer is no. However, if you lack flexibility in your legs, hips, or lower back, squats can most definitely injure you. It is imperative to stretch these areas, especially if you are progressing rapidly on your squatting program. A lack of flexibility in any part of your inner thighs or hips will pull your knee joints out of alignment, force your pelvis into an unnatural angle, or cause your lower back to round. A squat program must include flexibility exercises.
- Hamstrings. Inflexible hamstrings will cause problems during deadlifts, leading to excessive rounding of the lower back. This inflexibility will also make it difficult to get a proper range of motion on bent-over rows.
- Ribcage and surrounding soft tissue. By the age of 25, the rib cage and the connective tissue surrounding it are much less flexible than they are during childhood and adolescence. Maximum effort on pull-ups and overhead presses can strain the connective tissue. Flexibility training for these areas should proceed slowly, but it is important not to neglect it altogether.
Flexibility training and strength training: the two are inseparable
During your lifting program, don’t neglect your flexibility. If it is difficult for you to move through a full range of motion when you are not hoisting a barbell, you are at risk for injury when you perform the same movement with additional weight. Injury prevention is one of the things that separates successful weight lifters from those who never seem to make progress.