I have two questions regarding stretches.
1) The advices from the forum regarding the stretches, sums up to the following (correct me if I am wrong):
- a) the intensity of the stretches should be about 4-5 intense in a range of 1-10 max and we should do it only once per week
- b) we need to do less intense stretches only once per day, like the limber workout from the fundamentals course
But on the stretch videos, we hear many times the coach to instruct us to "push" and try harder. Is this for keeping us aware but still applying the intensity up to 4-5 or should we go further when we hear these kind of instructions?
2) We have a local gym in my area and there is a gymnastic coach which can perform many difficult positions, side splits etc. He is a bit crazy and his advice for achieving maximum mobility (especially side splits) is to try to do dynamic and static stretches as much as you can every day (at least 3-4 times per day), push as hard as you can (of course always with a very good warm up), keep your static stretches for as much time as you can (even more than 10 minutes) and he even suggest to try to sleep with your legs open on a wall... I know that these kind of advices are extreme, but all of his advanced athletes (all young children) can do splits, thoracic bridges etc. Is this because they started very early in their life and these kind of advices doesn't apply to older guys? Is it just luck that they haven't injured themselves? When they do stretching at the end of their workout, most of the children cry out of pain... Of course I understand that the above methods have a high risk of injury, especially for older guys and it is really cruel for children to be treated like this... although unfortunately this is a common bad practice when they are prepared to be top athletes...