Flexibility: The Key to Fitness with Katie Lawton, MEd

Podcast Transcript

John Horton:

Hey there, and welcome to another Health Essentials Podcast. I'm John Horton, your host.

Exercise routines often focus on building muscle so you can get bigger, faster and stronger. But there's something else far less sexy in the workout world that deserves your attention. Flexibility, it turns out, is key to everything when we talk about how your body moves and works. Exercise physiologist, Katie Lawton is joining us today to talk about the importance of flexibility and, better yet, how you can improve it. She's one of the many trusted experts at Cleveland Clinic who visit our weekly podcast to help us better understand our bodies. Now, let's stretch our knowledge as we focus on flexibility and how it can improve our well-being.

Thanks for jumping back on the podcast, Katie. It's always great talking fitness with you.

Katie Lawton:

Glad to be back.

John Horton:

Well, so today, we're chatting about flexibility, which just feels like something that gets overlooked by people. I mean, nobody's walking around bragging about their range of motion stats.

Katie Lawton:

No, and there's some people actually that absolutely hate to do flexibility for that matter, for whatever reason, but I think because they tend to be a little bit tighter, so they just hate to do it altogether.

John Horton:

Well, I would be in that group. I am notoriously … I neglect my flexibility in stretching, so I'm going to, hopefully, after our conversation today, I'll feel a little better about it. So to get a little bit of a better understanding of why flexibility is so important, let's start with just kind of defining what flexibility is and how it helps us.

Katie Lawton:

Flexibility is when we're working on elongating the muscle or working on range of motion, mobility, those types of things. It can help with some recovery, especially when we talk about foam rolling and things on those lines that are kind of wrapped in a little bit with the flexibility piece as well. We talked a little bit about some performance, aspects of it as well, and then, just, I think, feeling better overall when we're just doing everyday activities.

John Horton:

Well, and that's the thing I think that gets lost in some of this is that if you're more flexible, it should help you with everyday tasks around the house. Just reaching up onto a shelf or just doing anything, right?

Katie Lawton:

Because sometimes even just getting off of the floor … if you have grandkids and you're sitting on the ground and have to stand up … I mean some of that strength, but there is the mobility piece to be able to get off the floor as well.

John Horton:

So Katie, let's go over some of the benefits of better flexibility. One thing I've heard is that it will help you improve your performance if you're into sports or competing.

Katie Lawton:

Depending on the sport, it could have its different reasons for it. If you want to think of a pitcher, being able to have more range of motion or — especially, kind of golfers — and that's another one I usually get a lot on is golfing. If you don't have good trunk mobility or flexibility, you're going to start actually overcompensating with other muscle groups such as your shoulders or your low back or something on those lines. So yeah, that also has the performance aspect. The farther you get back into your golf swing, the farther you have to actually get behind the ball and actually produce more power behind the ball.

John Horton:

I'm guessing if your flexibility is a little bit better, you're probably not slicing it off into the woods quite as much.

Katie Lawton:

Well, that might be a whole other conversation, but at least as far as even not creating any joint issues anywhere else, I do find that there's a lot of people who come in with shoulder pain with golf and it has something to do with their range of motion and their flexibility surround the entire movement, and that's something that they should be working on off the golf course, but that's going to take extra time, so not everybody usually will take that time to do that kind of work.

John Horton:

And that actually leads right into the next question I was going to have, which is how flexibility can keep you injury-free. In doing some of the research ahead of this, I saw where if you are a little bit more flexible, you're going to avoid some of those dings that hit us a little bit.

Katie Lawton:

So you do generally want to have stability and mobility. So as far as the mobility goes, that's where the flexibility piece comes into play. If you don't have flexibility to do some type of a movement, you're going to start overcompensating, again, with another muscle group, and that's where that can cause some of that joint issue and not necessarily, again, if you've had some hamstring injuries — that's a whole other conversation — but within the joint itself, that's where, again, there's that overcompensation that we can do if we can't get through the full range of motion.

John Horton:

Well, I was going to say, yeah, that does get into the range of motion thing where if your joints aren't moving quite like they should, it really limits what you can do and how your body can respond if something comes up.

Katie Lawton:

Or what muscle grip you should be using during a certain type of a movement. Yes. Right.

John Horton:

Oh, what about … does stretching and flexibility … does all that kind of increase the blood flow to the muscles and help them just be their best?

Katie Lawton:

That's kind of a theory, I think, for the most part. I'm not quite sure that I've seen kind of both sides of the research on that one. I usually will just say whatever works. I don't think it necessarily reduces delayed onset muscle soreness if that is one of those theories as well. I'm not kind of a believer that all types of stretching are going to probably help any type of soreness along those lines either.

John Horton:

Well, and I know a big question that comes up is should you stretch before workouts, after workouts? I mean, is there an ideal time to do it?

Katie Lawton:

I like to do actually the stretching afterward for anything that .. muscles that are tight. Before exercise, you should generally work on more of a warmup and working through the range of motion and working through some lighter weights and things along those lines. This is, I guess, more or less, what I'm thinking of as far as strength training goes or before any type of weight training is where we really want to work on working through those muscles and actually starting to activate those muscles a little bit more. Stretching is what we would do after. So if we want to work on elongating those muscles, that's when we would do most of the stretching after the exercise because our muscles are warm at that point.

John Horton:

How often should we be stretching and working on our flexibility? Is this something you can do daily or-

Katie Lawton:

…Yeah.

John Horton:

...is it like, daily?

Katie Lawton:

Yeah. Yeah.

John Horton:

Oh man, I'm really not doing what I need to do.

Katie Lawton:

Yeah, I mean, I guess it depends on where you want to meet with your flexibility or how tight you really are. But yeah, you can do it once a day. You can do it twice a day if you really have that motivation to do it that frequently.

John Horton:

Oh man, well, I might be at that once-a-week category, so I think I'm going to have to up my pace here a little bit.

Another thing, and I have to be honest with you, Katie, I feel like the older I get, the less flexible I get. Is that just me or is that something we're all kind of dealing with?

Katie Lawton:

Yeah. And I have to kind of wonder, a lot of what I see is actually sitting for long periods of time is actually what shortens up on a lot of those muscles. When we're talking about the hips, we're talking about the hamstrings, sometimes, even our mid back or thoracic in this hunched-over position. So generally, especially I think as I get a little older and our jobs get a little bit more sedentary, I do think we tend to get a little bit tighter in that sense. I don't know if it's the aging or if it's the amount of work that we do sitting behind a computer that's creating a lot of that tightness.

John Horton:

Oh, man. Well, it definitely does not help sitting all day.

Katie Lawton:

No, no.

John Horton:

So I'm going to have to talk them into doing an interview while jogging or something.

Katie Lawton:

Or standing. I guess maybe that would be something to think about, as like a standing desk or something on low lines to stop from our hips being seated in a seated position. Our hamstrings kind of also shorten as well. We're also in that seated position. You can do as much stretching as you want, but if, ultimately, when we're sitting behind a desk for eight to 10 hours a day, again, it may just go back to where it is and I don't know how much stretching would be needed to be actually to offset some of that, too.

John Horton:

All right, well now we're going to talk about what we can do to make our bodies more flexible. Because I understand it is something you can improve and if you put some work-

Katie Lawton:

…If you really work at it. Yeah, yeah.

John Horton:

Yeah. So give us some tips. What can we do?

Katie Lawton:

For some people, I think that stretching for longer is one option. So stretching for a minute to two minutes depending on where you're also looking at stretching is one aspect. Stretching, say daily. To make that consistent, I think, and the other piece as well. Yoga, foam rolling, sometimes, massage, right? Which kind of goes along with that foam rolling aspect as well. Because sometimes, we just get those knots within that muscle that stretching isn't going to necessarily do anything for us, so we actually have to kind of break up those knots that are kind of within those muscles as well.

John Horton:

Can you give us a few stretches that we might be able to try?

Katie Lawton:

My favorite is … my general recommendation is the piriformis stretch, where you're kind of going to put your, let's say your right leg is going to go on top of your left knee. So your ankle's going to be resting on top of your left knee and you're going to go ahead and push and you kind of have that kind of figure four going with your right knee. And then, you're going to kind of push down or lean into that right knee and you should feel that in your posterior hip on the right side.

John Horton:

Is that while sitting that you do that?

Katie Lawton:

You can do it sitting. There's multiple variations of it. So whatever variation … there's a pigeon pose if you want to think of it that way. So it's like an elevated … or you can do an elevated piriformis stretch. You can do it lying down, bringing your knee up to your chest. You can do it kind of like in a crossover. So you take your knee and you cross it over your body. That would also get that piriformis stretch for you as well.

John Horton:

OK, all right. And you said that'll work on your hips and I guess your butt area, right?

Katie Lawton:

Your butt area, yes.

John Horton:

OK, all right. What other stretches? Let's move and hit a different part of the body.

Katie Lawton:

I also really like a child's pose or something where you are ... you can also do it on the wall, you can do it on your desk if you want to. So you're going to place your hands on top of your desk and you're going to kind of scoot your chair backward so that you're reaching and really reaching your fingers forward. You're going to feel it kind of in your middle back and potentially even your lower back depending on how tight you are in your lower back. But it's kind of more for those posture muscles as well.

John Horton:

And that's where you'd sink down. So you put your arms out and then you just start sinking into it, right?

Katie Lawton:

Correct.

John Horton:

You should feel that stretch kind of in the top of your shoulders and then going down.

Katie Lawton:

Going down, yes.

John Horton:

We have you here. We want to steal as much as we can. So what else you got for us?

Katie Lawton:

I really like to stretch out my ankles and calves, especially being … doing some running, some jumping movements and things along those lines. I do find that I get a lot of knots in my calves. I'd like to do it with ... so you can do a wall stretch or I actually like to find one of those slant boards if possible. I know not everybody has access to one of those — or stick my toe on a curb and get my calf really well. And I like to do that one with my knee straight and one with my knee bent.

John Horton:

Now the wall stretch is one … I can tell you I honestly do that one. I've been pushing and trying to move walls for a long time.

Katie Lawton:

Have you tried doing it with your knee bent?

John Horton:

I have, believe it or not, because my one son ran cross-country and they used to do it that way. And the first time he told me, I always did it with the straight leg and you push and he was like, "No, no, you got to do the other kind." And I'm like, "What are you talking about?" And just for anyone listening, so I think the traditional way people do that is you kind of push up against the wall and you have your legs straight and you kind of feel that pressure on that.

Katie Lawton:

Yeah. It's kicked back behind you a little bit, yeah.

John Horton:

Yeah. But if you bend your knee, it's amazing how much more-

Katie Lawton:

…It's down usually into the Achilles a little bit more or into the lower half of the calf. You do have two calf muscles. You have one that attaches to the back of the knee and one that does not. So when you bend your knee, you're taking out that knee flexion so that it's actually going to get down into another muscle.

John Horton:

Since you mentioned how we sit all day, everything, what about do you have a good stretch for either your arms or even your neck?

Katie Lawton:

Neck is kind of an embarrassing one. It's called a chin tuck, and I don't really want to do it on video right now, but it is where you're going to take your head and you're going to actually push your chin in and you're actually going to create a double chin for. So that's why I don't do it on camera.

John Horton:

I'll do it. Focus on me here. So you just put it down like this?

Katie Lawton:

No, you're actually going to take it and push it toward that back wall behind you.

John Horton:

Like, lean backward?

Katie Lawton:

Yes, yes.

John Horton:

Oh, that is not a good look. You're right. Oh, but you can feel it in your neck and kind of up in your shoulders, too.

Katie Lawton:

Yes. So you actually can use your fingertips, too. You actually probably want to put your head up a little bit. All right there, you're good. And actually use your fingertips a little bit to push your chin back into your spine a little bit.

John Horton:

Oh, wow. All right. Well there you go. That way you didn't have to look silly, Katie. That's why they have me here.

Katie Lawton:

Thanks for taking one for the team.

John Horton:

So thank you for offering those up. Are there any precautions that someone should take before they start a program to improve their flexibility?

Katie Lawton:

Yeah, I do find that some people have some joint restrictions that we don't really know that we have. I often find people who can't get in a butterfly stretch because they feel some pinching kind going on in their hip. Probably some restriction that you don't want to push through. Stretching could be kind of uncomfortable. So if we want to really elongate that muscle, we really kind of want to get into that uncomfortability zone, but it shouldn't be painful. And again, just that consistency I think is the big piece.

John Horton:

You had mentioned the pain thing, and you always hear no pain, no gain. So it sounds like though we're stretching, if you start feeling pain, it's time to ease off a little bit.

Katie Lawton:

Ease off a little bit. Right. And you should be able to feel yourself being able to work through that stretch. So usually, we'll say take a big breath in, big breath out, and you can find yourself actually going deeper into the stretch a little bit further.

John Horton:

If I remember right, you said a lot of times, you can go a minute and a half to two minutes per stretch.

Katie Lawton:

You can, yep. There's some … actually yoga classes that I think … they usually try and hold a pose up to five minutes.

John Horton:

Oh, man. All right. I really need to work on my stuff. So Katie, thanks, as always, for coming in and sharing such great info. I guess, before we kind of say goodbye so I can start working on my stretching, do you have anything else to add?

Katie Lawton:

No. It is individualized that everybody should be stretching the same things. I do think that if you do find that you're tighter in one area, you just really want to work on that one area, especially if you notice it's restricting any type of activity or sports that you're generally doing.

John Horton:

All right, well thank you for taking the time today, and great stuff as always.

Katie Lawton:

All right. Nice talking to you.

John Horton:

Working to improve your flexibility may not be the most exciting part of a fitness routine, but it's one of the best things you can do for your body. So invest some time in stretching and other exercises to stay loose. Odds are you'll see and feel the difference. Until next time, be well.

Speaker 3:

Thank you for listening to Health Essentials, brought to you by Cleveland Clinic and Cleveland Clinic Children's. To make sure you never miss an episode, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or visit clevelandclinic.org/hepodcast. This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended to replace the advice of your own physician.