Ouch That Hurts!

In January (6 months ago) I set myself a goal to be able to do the FULL SPLITS (Jean Claude Van Damme Style!) Well today I finally nailed it! Boom! 👊🏻👊🏻👊🏻! I used to be able to do the splits when I was a youngster, but I was made fun off by all the lads (apparently only ladies should do it!), so being the sensitive teenage snowflake that I was… I stopped doing it! What a shame (blooming peer pressure!).

Anyhow, one of my goals this year is to improve flexibility, to help with my posture and range of motion during weight training exercises. I’ve throughly enjoyed working on this often neglected aspect of training. Stretching  has helped me build a more aesthetically pleasing body, and improved my overall strength on compound movements like squats, deadlifts and the bench press (just what the Doctor ordered!). To start with a could barely get my legs past shoulder width, I was frustrated at my incompetence, but slowly, week by week things started to progress… and then yippee kiaaaa… I finally managed it! and boy do I feel a sense of achievement!

How did I do it? In a nutshell… one of my favourite words, I use it 5000x per day (ok slight exaggeration!) but LEP’ers will back me up on this… ‘CONSISTENCY! It’s literally just been a case of stretching post workout for 20-30 minutes 3-5x per week (for 24 weeks! nothing glamorous… just pure consistency!). Moral Of The Story… Set a goal, take small steps, strive for bitesize chunks of progress, be consistent, and never (ever!) give up. Trust me…Good things will happen.

👱💪 Nick ‘Van Damme’ Screetoni