How to address tight quads beyond FS Stretch Series?

Hi,

Questions in bold, context otherwise.

I've been doing all three stretch series for about 6 months now and have seen tremendous increase in a ton of my mobility/flexibility, but I notice one area that isn't really improving, though I've been fairly consistent, is quad mobility/flexibility. I can get into the Vertical Shin position of the FS series and even push out from the wall a bit, but I've had roughly that flexibility for the last 5 months and haven't seen much improvement since. 

I've also been following Foundation 1 and notice that a lot of the integrated mobility addresses hip and pike mobility (for lower body, and bicep/chest for upper body) but haven't seen any integrated mobility addressing quad. I wonder if this combo of stretch series and integrated mobility is what's pushing my progress in areas such as hip, hamstring, bicep and chest flexibility and not in the quad, since there haven't been integrated mobility exercises for that (at least not yet).

Are there additional stretches you would recommend to do during the FS to push quad mobility? What can I add as integrated mobility or simply supplemental stretching/mobility outside of the FS series to push quad mobility?

I notice in one of the stretch series videos, @Coach Sommer says to Orench "gotta keep working on this one, buddy." I'd love to understand what that looks like, tactically, since we're explicitly told not to do the stretch series more than once a week. Does that mean adding extra sets of that stretch within the series or on separate days? Does that mean doing other stretches supplementally?

Thanks!

Andrew

HI Andrew maybe you have to scale a bit the vertical shin exercise of the front split series, basically move away the knee from the wall of about 30 cm and begin to work again with the goal of reach the floor. then reduce the distance and so on.

Hi Alessandro,

I'm not having trouble doing the Vertical Shin exercise, I'm just not making much progress. One thing I notice about FS is that almost ALL of the stretches, aside from vertical shin, stretch the hamstring in some way. So over the 40min, your hamstrings get stretched for probably 20-30 min in some way. On the other hand, quads only get stretched in Vertical Shin and Vertical Shin with leg extended, which constitutes 4 min total per quad.

So again, I'm wondering if there is anything I can ADD to my routine to help me progress.

HAve you tried the variation I proposed above for at least a month? give it a try.

I'm in Front Split series for 5th month and have somewhat similar problem, but with hip flexors. I have had some tiny progress in other stretches (no worries, I know it all takes lots of time), but the problem is that after adding 2nd core workout into my weekly schedule and doing some more cycling training recently I see that my hip flexor mobility has actually gone worse (donald duck posture coming back slowly). My deskwork doesn't help either here. Similarly to what Andrew mentioned, for hip flexors there are 4 min total strech per hip once a week, which in my case doesn't seem to counteract the effects from core training (4x48s hollow body holds, 4x12 tuckups) twice a week + cycling 3hr total per week + sitting at work every day. Recently I bough the Fundamentals in order to incorporate daily mobility drills into my schedule. I already see some improvements in my calf mobility (that was my most stubbornly tight area so far), but crab walk doesn't seem to help me much either (maybe I'm not strong enough to be able to generate strong enough stretch in the hips here). Any recommendations?

9 hours ago, Alessandro Mainente said:

HI Andrew maybe you have to scale a bit the vertical shin exercise of the front split series, basically move away the knee from the wall of about 30 cm and begin to work again with the goal of reach the floor. then reduce the distance and so on.

Hi Alessandro, do you mean doing above as daily limbering? 

(Or did you mean scale the exercise in the frontsplit stretch series)

both of them.

Hey Alessandro,

I think I'm confused about the scaling since I can get into the stretch and even push it a bit more than butt against the wall. Wouldn't scaling be the opposite of what I want? Could you explain your reasoning a bit more so I understand the idea better? Very open to trying anything, just want to understand the reasoning behind it.

Also, from your last post, do you recommend doing the Vertical Shin stretch every day?

Thanks,

Andrew

POst a video of your vertical shin attempt and i'll tell you what you have to do for the specific situation.

On 4/3/2017 at 3:01 PM, Alessandro Mainente said:

HI Andrew maybe you have to scale a bit the vertical shin exercise of the front split series, basically move away the knee from the wall of about 30 cm and begin to work again with the goal of reach the floor. then reduce the distance and so on.

@Alessandro Mainente, 

Thanks for the recommendation here, just tried moving my knee out from the wall while focusing on bringing the back leg towards the floor this for today's FS session.  It seemed to work.  Felt more a sensation where the hip flexor meets the quad.  Another thing - by bringing the back knee out a bit, I can at least attempt 22&23 (straight leg vertical lunge), which wasn't possible at my level of flexibility keeping back knee against the wall.

Will continue and report progress, thanks again

For the last month or so I've been doing 60s vertical shin w/ straight leg most evenings but never on the day I do FS.  I started with 15" of yoga blocks on one side to stay upright and am now down almost 9" (I'm on my knuckles).  I'll try moving the back knee and see what that does for me, but this little extra stretching also helped.  On the nightly stretching I'm not pushing myself to go as low as possible, just to where there's tension.