Why Dorothy Loves Yoga and the Tin Man is Stuck

As legendary strength coach Dan John likes to joke, the best way to become a world champion is to choose the right parents.  While effective training can help you optimize your athletic potential, at the end of the day, there is no amount of training that will provide the same pay off as having the right genetics.

In the martial arts, flexibility is a much-desired skill.  And it is one that I lacked, even at the early age of eight years old when I started.  Forty five years later and my flexibility has not improved.  As I look around the training floor during our warm ups I note that among the novices, it is the women, not the men, who excel at our warm up stretches.  This probably does not surprise you at all.  Glance around the hot yoga studio next door and you will see a room dominated by women.

This is not to say that men cannot be flexible.  Some of our male black belt instructors have Jean Claude Van Damme levels of flexibility.  But is that a result of years of training or did they survive in their sport this long because they were born flexible?  

I do believe in mobility work.  I do believe in maximizing your natural range of motion.  But I do not believe in butting your head up against the hard reality of your physiological limitations or chasing range of motion ideals set by people with genetically superior potential for mobility.
The Flexibility Hormone
Relaxin is a hormone that does exactly what its name suggests, it relaxes muscle, loosens ligaments, softens bone and cartilage and stimulates tendon laxity.  It is best known for its role in the late stages of pregnancy as it prepares the pregnant mother’s pelvis to deliver a newborn baby's head through the birth canal.  While men and nonpregnant women generally have similar serum levels of relaxin, women’s relaxin levels spike monthly around ovulation.  This is why female athletes are at greatest risk for ACL injuries during this phase of their menstrual cycle. 

But though there is little difference between male and female serum levels of relaxin, a second hormone, estrogen, is known to up-regulate relaxin expression.  Of course, variation between individuals exists but, it begs the question: Are women more flexible because they do yoga or do more women like yoga because they are flexible?    

It’s All About the Ratios
Tendons are the tough, durable tissue that connect muscle to bone.  Tendon is much less elastic than muscle and has a very limited stretch potential.  While you may be able to increase your range of motion by stretching your muscles, there is little you can do to increase tendon range of motion. 

What many coaches fail to recognize is that tendon to muscle ratio is a genetically determined factor with a wide degree of variability and your tendon to muscle ratio will have significant influence over your athletic potential.  A person born with short muscles and long, strong tendons has a body well-adapted to bearing heavy loads.  Expect this athlete to be strong, explosive and durable.  But they may struggle if you ask them to touch their toes. 

An athlete with short tendons but a long muscle belly will wonder what all the fuss is about touching your toes, they will be able to bend over and place their hands flat on the floor from a standing position without even warming up.  But they are also the athlete most likely to get pinned by a heavy barbell in the bottom of their squat clean.  When you tell them to bounce out of the hole, they will wonder what they are supposed to bounce off of.   

Stretching will help you maximize your muscular range of motion but your muscle length potential is set by genetic factors beyond your control.  Attempts to contort yourself into positions unsuited to your physiology will result in serious tendon injury, surgery and potential life long problems.

Boning Up on the Splits
Another physiological factor determined by genetics is your skeletal structure including joint mechanics.  Our kickboxing instructors want us all to learn to do the splits like Van Damme.  Probably because they don’t realize most people’s hips are not designed to do the splits and no amount of stretching is going to change the bones of the hips and pelvis without breaking them. 


In fact, the extreme range of motion required by the splits is accessible only to people born with what is considered an “abnormal” hip structure.  Lotus refers to this as yoga’s dirty secret: the number of permanent hip injuries suffered by yoga practitioners attempting to achieve a mobility standard unsuited to their pelvic structure.

No guys, the point of this is not that mobility is bad and you should skip the stretches but that you should not base your mobility goals on the ability of others.  Instead, work within your body’s limitations.  Continue stretching tight muscles but avoid extreme stretches and do not try to push through sticking points.  There are several factors impacting your mobility that are outside your control.

Monday Make Up Day

1) CF Open WOD 25.2
21 pull-ups

42 double-unders

21 thrusters (weight 1)

18 chest-to-bar pull-ups

36 double-unders

18 thrusters (weight 2)

15 bar muscle-ups

30 double-unders

15 thrusters (weight 3)

Time cap: 12 minutes

2) Every minute on the minute for 5 minutes for load:

3 touch-and-go power snatches

Every minute on the minute for 5 minutes for load:
2 touch-and-go power snatches

Every minute on the minute for 5 minutes for load:

1 power snatch    

3) Speed Warm Up A
3x10 

Prisoner Squats

Jumping Jacks

Seal Jacks

Cross Jacks

3x10 

Half Squat Feet In-Out

Iso Squat Hold with press out

3x10

Half 2 Sumo Squat Jump Out

Iso Squat Hold with press out

3x50 Pogo Jumps

(heels up, elbows 90)

3x10 Parachute Jumps

(dorsiflex, arms up)