Martial Arts Hurdler Stretches

Video Transcript

"Now, there's a lot of varying beliefs, as far as, whether or not you should stretch with your eyes opened or closed. Yoga practitioners are very adamant about always stretching with your eyes open, so that that way you really maintain yourself, in the here and now. But for some people, like myself, I like to stretch with my eyes closed. I feel that when my eyes are closed I'm able to withdraw, within myself, a little bit more. I feel like I gain more control, over loosening up my muscles and just kind of relaxing, into the stretch, a little bit better. And so I see Jabaree here, his eyes are closed too, as he's kind of sitting into the stretch. The most important thing is really to breathe. And each exhale you want to imagine your muscles loosening up, just a little bit more. The idea is just to be able to sit in these natural relaxed positions, so you can kind of keep them, for a little while. He's pulling his head down towards his knee. The next stretch he's doing is called the hurdler stretch. This is another one of those stretches where there's different beliefs on how the stretch would go. Notice his knee is coming over to the side and is bent behind him. When your knee is bent behind, it takes a lot of pressure off of the knee. It gives you a little bit of a stretch, on the inside of the leg, possibly a little bit to the calf but it lets you get a little bit more of an intense stretch, into your hamstring, of the front leg. He's going to switch that, from one side to the other, keeping that end, nice and tight. Now remember, you would hold these stretches for a much longer time then you see right here and usually thirty five to forty-five seconds. And those are our series or floor stretches."