The Genius of Flexibility: The Smart Way to Stretch and Strengthen Your Body

The Genius of Flexibility: The Smart Way to Stretch and Strengthen Your Body
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Manufacturer: Fireside
Average Customer Rating: Average rating of 4.0/5Average rating of 4.0/5Average rating of 4.0/5Average rating of 4.0/5Average rating of 4.0/5

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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 613.71
EAN: 9780743270878
ISBN: 0743270878
Label: Fireside
Manufacturer: Fireside
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: 2005-09-06
Publisher: Fireside
Studio: Fireside
Accessories
Tanita BC533 Glass Innerscan Body Composition Monitor
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Editorial Reviews:
Something The World Hasn't Yet Seen -- You Can Forever Be More Flexible.

The Technique: RESISTANCE STRETCHING® offers immediate, cumulative, and permanent increases in flexibility, takes the pain out of stretching, and protects you from injuring yourself by overstretching.

The Program: THE MERIDIAN FLEXIBILITY SYSTEM® provides stretches for sixteen unique muscle groups with physiological and psychological benefits.



Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating: Average rating of 4/5Average rating of 4/5Average rating of 4/5Average rating of 4/5Average rating of 4/5
Summary: Resistance Stretching
Comment: This is a must for anyone interested in a sophistocated and proven method to add to your exercise program.
Customer Rating: Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5
Summary: Pleasantly surprised
Comment: I am 7 months pregants and I've been experiencing all the joyful discomfort that comes with being pregnant. A few of the stretching techniques reported in the book have helped me tremendously. My back is no longer aching 24/7, energy level is much improved, but more importantly I am sleeping much better. I strongly recommend this book to pregnant women.
Customer Rating: Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5
Summary: This book is great
Comment: I've been doing martial arts for several years now and I have always had a problem with flexibility. Especially with my legs. I have been doing the stretches that are in the book for about two weeks now and I am seeing real results!
Customer Rating: Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5
Summary: taking it to the next level
Comment: Results-oriented stretching is an art unto itself. Most people just go thru the perfunctory movements with no real changes occuring in their flexibility because they don't understand what has to happen to create and maintain a permanent change in muscle length. Flexibility and strength go hand in glove as do flexibility and RECOVERY. As a long-time fitness trainer I would recommend this book to anyone who is physically active and wants to REMAIN that way. It will present you with a new way to think about and approach stretching no matter what your level of ability, and more importantly achieve lasting change and results.
Customer Rating: Average rating of 2/5Average rating of 2/5Average rating of 2/5Average rating of 2/5Average rating of 2/5
Summary: An odd and inadequate introduction to a good system
Comment: Our collective understanding of athletic performance training has changed a great deal in the past couple of decades. For a number of years the athletic culture was dominated by a strong emphasis on bodybuilding and general strength training. This has been refined over the years to a more functional direction and to incorporate more efficient training methods that make better use of training time and effort. It was once nearly impossible to get what most experts considered the right amount of skill training, flexibility training, strength training, endurance training, and so on, all in the same athlete because our approach was to keep adding more effort and more volume and eventually burn out and injure the athlete.

As a result, the evolution of athletic training has neccessarily moved us toward increasingly more efficient methods emphasizing baseline assessment testing, functional performance areas, specific methods of recovery, and more subtle forms of training feedback rather than blind incorporation of increasing training workload volumes.

I think the Meridian Flexibility System that is the basis for the material in this book is one of those effective methods that reflects this trend. While I don't doubt that it is effective and that the author is good at using it with people, I don't think this system is especially unique. It is true that not every subtle skill for using these kinds of methods can be described in mechanical terms, but I don't think it serves us any better to use unvalidated esoteric theories instead.

Personally I think there's more integrity in simply saying that the method works and we don't entirely understand all the details if that is the case. Even better would be working to explore scientifically reasonable explanations for the method which are often not far from hand. Not that a coach should always have to worry about explaining how and why their methods work, but if they also want to present themselves as a leading revolutionary theorist they do have to make that additional effort I think. As an example, I particularly like the way Stretch to Win treats its somewhat novel flexibility training principles. Not as strong an emphasis on being "revolutionary" as Cooley but just as much originality and more plausible explanations.

I think this book spends too little time describing the practical elements of the method and too much explaining the author's idiosyncratic theories about it. It also suffers from a failure to recognize methods that are similar and claim similar results, whether to point out common underlying principles or simply to compare and contrast.

My experience is that the same sort of benefits that people claim from this system are common to dynamic movement forms of Yoga (for example: PRASARA YOGA: Flow Beyond Thought, which paradoxically are now being taught in increasingly less esotoric ways. As Yoga has become a more common and increasingly Westernized mode of training, coaches dissatisfied with traditional American and European athletic training have often resorted to dipping more into esoteric principles.

It may be that we really do need to incorporate some of those esoteric principles into our understanding of human health and performance, but so far I haven't seen any compelling reason to think so. Rather I've found that the authors who have made more of an effort to be open minded about methods and yet keep a slightly more skeptical approach to explanations for those methods have made the most interesting and substantive contributions.

I cannot recommend this book as an introduction to flexibility or as a reasonable explanation of the principles of flexibility, "genius" or otherwise. I didn't get much out of it and found it particularly difficult to follow in spite (or perhaps because of!) having a lot of experience with other methods. However I do think that the method itself is well worth exploring as one of a number of good systems that in practice makes use of sound principles of muscle opposition, breathing coordination, optimal tension, mind/body feedback and so on.
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