Your nervous system locks your hamstrings when it senses pain, blocking toe touches. This six-minute protocol uses a resistance band, breathwork, foam rolling, and a Voodoo floss band to release that guarding and restore flexibility in one session.
This video, I'm going to show you how to release your nervous system using a bunch of tools and tricks. If you cannot reach your toes because you feel guarded and tight, we're gonna fix that in this video. You might be able to do it by the end of this video. So the first thing that I wanted to show you guys is muscular guarding. Like, what is muscular guarding in the first place? It's whenever you feel pain and your body locks up. Your nervous system will literally Stop you from doing what you want to do. Imagine you get slapped. That feeling of being slapped will lock up everything in your face. Same thing happens whenever you feel pain. So if you're stretching for your toes and you feel pain, your body's going to lock up. You're not going to get anywhere. The first thing I would do is just an activate-release technique. Now it sounds crazy, but we are going to just activate our hamstring in our lower back And then release. That's one way to get rid of muscular guarding. So what I want you to do is you're going to use a band of some sort or a belt, put it around your foot, lay on your back. You're going to push your leg into your hands so you're activating your hamstring. Do that for 5 seconds. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Relax. Grab your band and you're going to pull back and you're going to pull back for 30 seconds. Now, it takes 90 seconds for tissue change. So I want you to do this back and forth for at least 3 rounds, 4 if you really, really, really want to work on it. After you've done that, you're going to repeat, press, hold for 5 seconds, activating that muscle. Relax and then pull. See, I've already got more mobility. If you do this 2 more times, it's pretty crazy what you can do. Now, the next way that we can release your nervous system is just some simple breathwork, just exhaling. If you slap yourself in the face, you can release some of your muscles. Ah. Another way to release your breathwork is spitting. So into your core. We're going to use a couple of those on this next stretch. Now, this next stretch is a Spider-Man stretch. It is for the hamstring, but it's a different way of attacking it. I'm going to use my blocker here and we're going to do some breathwork. So I'm going to go into my Spider-Man stretch here. Most people cannot touch their elbow to the ground. I mean, I can. What I want you to do, let's start with your block. If this is really tight for you, back off a little bit. Fake spit 5 times. You're activating your core. You're letting go of your nervous system. And then I want you to inhale for 3 seconds. Hold for 3 seconds. Exhale for 8. And then try again. Look how much deeper you can do. Now, the other thing about breathwork, as long as you elongate your exhale, if your exhale is longer than your inhale, it'll take you out of your fight or flight and put you more into a calm state. So anytime you feel stressed out, whether it's because of physical pain or Or emotional stress, if you just focus on your exhale, if you just exhale for 7 seconds, you're going to notice your heart rate slow down, your body starts to relax. Same thing happens when you're stretching. So if you can focus good enough or well enough and then just do the breathwork, just exhale and exhale, you can get much deeper into your The next thing we're going to do is tissue work, or actually using our foam roller. I'm going to show you a Voodoo Band in a second, but just smashing on the tissue. Even if you had a massage therapist just massage your tissue, you're going to release tension in the muscle. So what we're going to do is just sit on the roller on our hamstring and roll back and forth. And you would do this again, 60 to 90 seconds till you feel your body releasing. The other way that you could do this is with a Voodoo Floss Band. This is one of my favorite tools, but it basically does the same thing. The difference is that with the Voodoo Floss Band, it's hitting your— every single side of your leg at the same time. Okay. Or appendage, and you're not just smashing one side, which is super helpful, saves time, and you also get that backside antagonist muscle to release. So what we're going to do is tie this thing on. Now I'm getting flossing on each side of my thigh. Lay back, bring my knee in and out, mobilize the tissue. Just like so. And then take the band off. The other way that you can release your nervous system and your body will be more flexible is just a light warm-up. So walking on a treadmill, or you'll notice that you have more mobility at the end of your workout than you do at the beginning when you're cold. And that has to do with blood flow and just your nervous system releasing. So we're going to do a light warm-up now on that exact same area. And then we're going to test and see the flexibility of that area. So same thing, just warm up, working my hamstring, my knee, this leg, getting it nice and lubed up. And then we'll go back to our stretch. Now, if I did all of these tools and tactics, I should be pretty flexible. And there you have it. Now, if that's not flexible enough for you, because obviously we had to figure out how unflexible you were at the beginning, you should be able to touch your toes. And now it's really weird. My right leg, because all I did was right leg, super flexible. Left, not so flexible. So it looks like I got to do the same thing on the left. See you guys later.
