Stretching Advice

[1druid1]

After many years of putting my body through rigerous abuse without proper stretching and conditioning I am now at a stage where I would say a plank of wood was more flexible than me. My worst areas at the moment are Shoulders, Hips/Glutes and Hamstrings. I have tried many things but dont seem to progress at all in these areas.

Shoulders

At the moment my shoulders are pretty bad, I have dislocated both shoulders over the years and my left one for the second time at christmas there. If you take my body as the vertical line then my shoulders are about 10 to 13 degress from being vertical before getting tight.

Hips/Glutes

I have been told that I walk with penguin feet purely because my Hips / glutes are that tight that its pulling my legs out.

Hamstrings

Hamstrings have always been a problem for me, I have never been able to sit up straight while sitting with straight legs, I cant even get close to touching my toes before I start to feel the pain just above the back of my knee and sometimes it feels its coming directly from the back of the knee.

I dont know if I am a lost cause, but any help and advice would be appreciated.

Cheers

Druid

[JL]

I've been in a similar situation with my hamstrings from a long layoff (one year) of stretching, and I can now almost put my palms to the floor after about 4 months. I'm not a medical practitioner, but most injury therapy I've come across encourages stretching as a part of prevention and rehab, but I don't know how dislocated shoulders factor into it all. I think as far as lower body, you are in the clear. Any stretching routine will probably show progress at your level. My hamstring routine was very simple, and not painful. What I did was bend over onto my bed with my arms straight out as support, and slowly work my arms farther away from my body. Whenever I would get very relaxed, I just went a little farther. I keep the legs stiff (contract the quads a bit) for at least 50% of the total hold time. Hold times were rarely under 30 seconds, and done every day before bed. I found it takes at least 30 seconds to get comfortable with a postion. You can also move in and out of the stretch a bit; I found that helped me to relax, rather than attempt to fight one static position. Do I think this the fastest way to increase flexibility? No. PNF is the fastest method I've used. However, I've gotten soreness from it, and I didn't want it to mess with my recovery, so I rarely do it now, but continue to make gains without it.