Exercises laid out in this book have been known to restore youthful mobility to creaky old hinges, oftentimes reversing degenerative conditions. Russian specialists categorically state that kids who abuse themselves with the passive stretches so popular in the US, may weaken their joints and acquire spine deformities.
The Super Joints active flexibility drills are the preferred mode of flexibility development for young athletes, as they strengthen their muscles, something they need a lot more than literal stretching.
The Super Joints program delivers. The unique Russian exercises laid out in Super Joints develop your ability to really get your feet up—way better than any other method in existence. Super Joints exercises complement Relax into Stretch exercises and enable you to go even beyond the great gains you have made with Relax into Stretch. So, that means you, Comrade! Checking yourself…are your joints mobile enough? Initial tips. Three plane neck movements. Shoulder circles.
Fist exercise. Wrist rotations. Elbow circles. The Egyptian. Russian pool. Arm circles. Ankle circles. Knee circles. Hula hoop. Belly dance. The Cossack. Split switches. Spine rotation. Russian Pool—for super-cranking your shoulders…Arm circles—for all the ROM your shoulders need……Ankle circles…Knee circles…Squats…finding the sweet spot…why deep squats are essential and how to avoid injury with correct performance…Hula hoop— a favorite of Russian Phys. Is active isolated stretching any good?
Stretching to help slumped shoulders…stretch weakness and tight weakness…how to address the weakness of the overstretched muscles and the tightness of their antagonists…two respected Russian regimens for better posture…understanding the vital difference between a tight and a toned muscle…the Davis Law…functional and dysfunctional tension.
Pink panther straight-legged situp. Shoulder dislocate with a bungee cord. Shoulder blade spread. Side wall reach. Pink Panther knee chambers and kicks. Pink Panther Arabesque. More height and power to your kicks with the scissors maneuver. Shoulder dislocate with a bungee cord—the Olympic weightlifter favorite for mutant shoulder flexibility…Shoulder blade spread—a popular stretch among old time strong men…Side wall reach…Pink Panther knee chambers and kicks—to dramatically improve the height and precision of your kicks…a S.
Years and mileage pile calcium deposits on your joints and promote connective tissue growth in all the wrong places. Your youthful well-oiled hinges come to a grinding halt. Is your gig up? Not yet, Comrade. Help is on the way. In Russia and his native Ukraine, Nikolay Amosov is a public figure with the stature Arnold Schwarzenegger boasts in this country.
You may be surprised to find out that the 1 Russian exercise icon is not a three hundred pound weightlifter or wrestler, but an octogenarian surgeon with the wiry physique of a Bruce Lee and the ascetic fat-free face of a Jacques Ives Cousteau.
Until recently, Academician Amosov ran a schedule that would a kill a twentyfive year old yuppie, not to mention a horse. In his late seventies and early eighties he performed two open heart surgeries a day, an average of eleven hours, wearing out two support crews a quarter to a half his age along the way.
In his spare? Academician Amosov had not always been a human dynamo. The fitness superstar started out as a retired Red Army lieutenant colonel in his late fifties with the World War II behind him, a spare tire in the front, and an assortment of diseases. The turning point was the day when Amosov formulated and put to practice his now famous theory of limit loads, which I will cover in detail in my upcoming book on Russian natural health practices.
One of the corner stones of the theory is the belief that a human organism has a great ability to regenerate itself. Use—intense use! I will not beat around the bush but cut to the chase: 1. While still lying in bed on your back, hold on to the headboard, raise your legs, and bring them behind your head so— hopefully—your knees touch your forehead. Nikolay Amosov in his late seventies If you choose to do the drill on the floor you may press down into the floor with your palms positioned by your hips or hold on to some stationary object above your head.
Keep your legs reasonably straight. Try to touch the floor behind your head with your feet, as long as you do not load your neck. Keep your weight on your shoulders and upper back, not your neck. Stand upright, then bend over and try to touch the floor with your fingers or even your palms. The chin tucks in as you fold over and the head tilts back as you stand up.
Exercise caution. Passively exhale on the way down and inhale into your stomach on the way up. Sort of push off your thighs with your belly. If you do it right, the intra-abdominal pressure when rising on inhalation will straighten out your spine like a hydraulic jack—with minimal back stress. If you are not sure how to use your diaphragm or your health condition prohibits the standing toe touch, practice the drill sitting on the floor, with your legs straight in front of you.
Reach forward on a sigh of relief, sit up as you inhale. Maximal amplitude arm circles. Turn your head left and right in sync with the arm and shoulder movements to get more done in less time. Side bends. The palms slide along the trunk and legs. As one palm reaches down to the knee and beyond, the other palm is coming up to the armpit.
Tilt your head from side to side in sync. Make sure not to twist, move in one plane. Lift your elbow and reach over your shoulder with your hand trying to touch the opposite shoulder blade. Tuck your chin in at the same time. Turn your torso clockwise and counterclockwise with a max amplitude. Keep your straight arms in front of you, the palms facing forward and the fingers clasped. The arms move in sync with the torso and amplify its movement.
The head rotates in sync as well. Make sure not to bounce at the limit of your rotation; your spine would not care for it. Stand straight. Alternately lift your knees to your stomach. Reach as high as you can.
To make it tougher, hold a towel in front of your hips and bring your knee over it, back and forth, without bending over. As you get better, pull the slack out of the towel. Then start increasing the width of your grip on the taut towel so it gets higher off the ground and makes the drill even more challenging. Pushups on the floor or with your hands resting on a piece of furniture. Place the weight near the bases of your palms rather than closer to the fingers. If the traditional technique hurts your wrists you have a couple of options.
The yuppie choice is a set of pushup handles or a pair of hex-shaped dumbbells. The manly alternative is to do your pushups the karate way, on your knuckles. If you do not plan on kicking butt in the near future you may do your pushups on the full surfaces of the fist shame on you.
But the proper martial arts knuckle pushup calls for resting your weight only on two knuckles of each fist, those of the index and the middle fingers. You will find that this technique will strengthen your wrists in a hurry.
In the Soviet Special Forces we knocked off knuckle pushups on concrete—you would be wiser to do yours on a surface that has some give, for instance linoleum. Make sure that the floor is clean; dirt particles can do a number on your baby soft skin. The grip width is up to you. Keep your butt tucked under; this will make your pushups look crisp and protect your back from sagging and hurting.
Do not constrict your chest, keep it wide open. The range of motion will be slightly reduced, the pecs will be pre-stretched for more power, and you are less likely to hurt your shoulders that way. Look straight ahead rather than down. Tension in the neck extensor muscles facilitates a stronger contraction of the elbow extensors. Synchronize your breathing with your movement. Failing to do so in an endurance event is the kiss of death. Under the circumstances it is most natural to inhale on the way down and exhale on the way up.
Do not underestimate the power of such visualization. There is plenty of evidence that the choice of a breathing pattern has a profound effect on muscular tension.
Roman chair situps. Sit on a sturdy stool, hook your feet under a couch, and do situps. Go down as low as your physical limitations allow. Come up, reaching forward towards your feet as far as you can.
While Western specialists have been lamenting their dangers , Russians have been doing stretch situps—over a stool at home or over a pommel horse in the gym—for decades and are not about to stop. Hyperlordosis, or an exaggerated arch of the lower back, is rampant in the United States. Short, tight hip flexors are the usual culprit. These psoas muscles originate in the small of your back and run through your stomach to insert in front of your thighs.
When they shorten, they pull the lower back forward, thus increasing the arch and tilting the pelvis forward. This setup is unhealthy and unattractive. When a person with tight hip flexors, weak abs, and, typically, a bad back, tries to do a stretch situp, especially without proper instructions, there could indeed be problems.
Hyperlordosis, or an exaggerated arch of the lower back 2. Good relaxed posture with the spine dictating proper hip position. NOTE: Bringing the angle of the hips forward will align the spine 1.
Kyphosis, or an exaggerated arch of the upper back. Hyperlordosis, or an exaggerated arch of the lower back. First, carefully study the Secrets of Safer Back Bending printed below and follow them to the letter. Second, employ paradoxical breathing: passively exhale on the way down and inhale as you fold back up, the opposite of what you would do in a yoga class.
There are two reasons for this madness. A passive exhalation will deepen muscle relaxation and easily increase your range of motion ROM ; I have explained how this works in Relax into Stretch. And inhaling as you are getting bent and constricted will increase the difficulty of the situp.
You will score some training effect for the midsection and the respiratory muscles in the process of getting a flexible spine. Third, increase your depth very gradually, within a workout and as weeks go by. Fourth, start your ascent from the lowest point by tucking your chin in. Then roll up rather than sit up. Well, anything worth doing is worth doing right. Squats while holding on to the back of a chair.
Review the squat performance tips in the mobility training exercise section. In all ten drills start with ten repetitions a day and progress as explained in the text. If you literally bend back, your movement is limited to a couple of lumbar vertebrae. You distress this area and do not even get much ROM out of it. Once you have opened up your spine it is time to bend it back.
Instead of hinging it on your lumbar vertebrae alone try to get some motion out of every segment of the spine, from top to bottom. Excessive bending is one hazard; a strong pull of the hip flexors on the spine is another. Spine hyperextension is frequently accompanied by hip extension. This action pulls on the strong and tight hip flexors. Unfortunately, instead of stretching they usually tenaciously keep their length and pull hard on the lumbar spine to exaggerate the arch even further.
Besides, flexed glutes will semi-relax the psoas and further dampen their powerful pull. According to the neurological phenomenon of reciprocal inhibition, when a muscle is contracting, its antagonist, or the opposite number, relaxes to make the movement more efficient: why press the gas and the brake pedals at the same time?
The glutes are hip extensors; they oppose the hip flexors—which include the psoas. That is why it is generally advisable to flex your glutes during back bending exercises. Academician Amosov emphasizes a maximal range of motion in his exercises. This is the simple the key to the effectiveness of his youth-restoring calisthenics.
Other, even more complicated routines generally do not pay attention to this vital advice how about those idiots who tell you not to do full squats? Rotating a joint through its anatomically complete range of motion —or trying to approach that ROM if the joint is damaged—smoothes out the joint surfaces and lubricates them.
This contributes greatly to the joint's health. A full range of motion is gained or maintained. Joint mobility is not the same thing as muscle flexibility. When doing mobility drills, you generally will not feel much of a stretch, which is fine. A muscle does not always have to be stretched to put a joint through its full range of motion. For example, you will achieve complete hip flexion if you stand upright and bring your knee towards your chest.
Not much of a stretch, right? To stretch one of the muscles that oppose hip flexion, the hamstring, you will have to raise your leg with your knee straight or nearly straight. Unless you are a mutant, you will not succeed in touching your chest or stomach with your knee; your ham will tighten up and stop you long before that.
So muscle stretching will not deliver well-oiled joints. Your hinges need a distinctly different type of workout from your muscles. The Academician differentiates three states of joint health.
Twenty reps per joint will suffice for prevention until you are thirty or so according to the Academician. The second stage usually hits by the time you are forty, give or take a few years. The joints already have salt deposits and they speak up with aches and a limited ROM.
Not all the time though. Sometimes symptoms disappear for years only to resurface again. When this happens, and even if it does not but you hit forty, the man says the numbers must be cranked up to 50— per joint. Especially for your spine. The third stage is when the joint aches almost constantly and actively interferes with your work and life.
X-rays show changes, the most common being bone spurs growing between vertebrae. Bad posture, poor body mechanics at work and in the gym, and lack of joint movement are to blame. Surgeons who have to stand for hours over a table frequently suffer from bad backs, mentions Nikolay Amosov. The only way to prevent age related joint problems is through exercise, states Academician Amosov. The Academician urges you to ease into joint mobility training. Start with ten movements and add ten a week.
An even more gradual schedule recommended by Amosov is to add five a week for the first month and then start adding ten reps a week until the target number is reached. Move fast says the man—but not at the expense of the range of motion! But make sure to slow down for the last ten reps and really get a stretch. A more conservative approach to mobility training is to make slow circles with your joints, starting with small amplitude and working up to the joint's max range.
That is the Super Joints prescription for all the exercises laid out in this book. Mobility drills are ideally performed every morning. You will not only do your joints a favor, but will get rid of stiffness as well. Relax into Stretch fans, do not expect that the ability to do a split will make you forever-stiffness-free; you should watch me get off the plane! You get 'rusty' whenever your proprioceptors—the sensors that give your body information about its position in space, its speed of movement, etc.
When nothing happens, your nervous system is not sure what to expect from the environment and tightens up your muscles—just in case.
That's why you feel like the Tin Man in the morning or after any long period of inactivity. Movement wakes up your proprioceptors, the nervous system chills out and you limber up.
This one offers more cardio, strength, and some other benefits in addition to joint mobility. Lie on your back and bring your feet behind your head while keeping your legs reasonably straight. This popular in Russia exercise calls for lying on your back and lifting your legs. Rest your elbows under your back, place your hands in the small of your back, and prop your body on your forearms.
Your legs and toes should point straight up and your shoulders and upper back rather than your neck should be loaded. Do the movements—the eventual goal—at a rapid clip. Make sure to push yourself enough to sweat and breathe hard although Amosov warns not to let your RPMs go above twice your resting heart rate.
You should be done in 25—40 minutes. Simple and to the point as you can see. These for the first week, others for the second, etc. They argue that every muscle needs its own movement. Why cram their brains? But if you do not mind flexing your brain a little I suggest that you design your own routine from the drills I have hand-picked and laid out for you in the exercise section. They are absolutely the best and not any more time consuming than the Amosov basics. Following is a battery of joint mobility tests developed by Soviet specialist F.
If you want to be a healthy, well functioning individual you should meet these guidelines. It goes without saying that the following level will not be sufficient for select sports such as gymnastics or rock climbing. Tip your head forward. Your chin should touch your chest. Tilt your head back without jamming your neck.
If you keep your body upright you should be able to look at the ceiling at a spot slightly behind you. Tilt your head to the right and then left while looking in the mirror. If you draw a vertical line through the top of the top ear, the bottom of the lower ear should come very close to that line.
Turn your head to the right and then to the left. You should be able to look exactly to the right or left without moving your eyes. Stand near a wall facing away from it. Reach up with your arms, bend back —review the Secrets of Safer Back Bending! The further you stand from the wall and succeed, the better your score. Consider recruiting a spotter to save you from crashing back on your head. Stand with your right side facing the wall. Lift your straight left arm and bend strictly sideways, no twisting, toward the wall.
The lower you can touch the wall without losing your balance the more points you get. Repeat on the other side. All of the shoulder tests are performed standing upright with your feet almost together. Draw your shoulder blades together until they touch.
Push both shoulders forward at least level with your breastbone. Shrug your shoulders up to your chin level. Measure your results with the help of a mirror. Grip a stick with a wide over grip. Keeping your arms straight lift your arms over your head and keep rotating them until the stick touches your lower back.
The closer is your grip the more flexible your shoulders. Be careful; it is easy to get hurt if you are too ambitious with these shoulder dislocates! Review the fine points of shoulder dislocates in the exercise section. Elbow extension. Just straighten out your arm. Your mobility is ideal if your forearm forms a straight line with your upper arm.
If you cannot quite straighten out your elbow, chances are you have a congenital condition that is very unlikely to be corrected. It is interesting that the powerlifting rules specify that a competitor who cannot lock out his elbows because of his bone structure is supposed to notify the officials before the meet.
Otherwise the lifter will get red lighted on the bench press for failing to lock out and complete the lift. If, on the other hand, your elbows bend back beyond a straight line with the upper arms, you have a problem that can and should be fixed. Elbows that hyperextend easily are vulnerable. Strength exercises, for example pushups, various presses, and supports such handstands, will help. Russian experience shows that crosscountry skiing is another aid.
Forearm pronation and supination. Lay your forearm flat on a table in front of you, a ninety-degree angle in your elbow. You should be able to lay your palm flat, then turn your forearm from inside out and rest the back of your palm on the surface. If you flex your wrist actively, that is only using muscular effort, without any pressure from the other arm or any other object, the hand should be perpendicular to the forearm.
To check your wrist extension, or back bending, assume the pushup position. Your forearms should remain vertical while your palm is flat on the floor and your elbows are locked. Adduct your wrist, that is bend it toward the forearm on the little finger side while keeping your fingers straight. The first joint of the thumb should fall in line with the tip of the elbow. Lie on your back and flex your hip, that is bring your knee towards you chest.
You should be able to touch your chest or stomach. Hip abduction. I believe this test to be unacceptably dangerous and propose that you test yourself seated on the floor instead.
Spread your straight legs as wide as possible, then spread your arms and note how far out are the insides of your feet relative to your fingertips. If you match your wingspan with your feet you are doing great. Rotate your hip or turn your straight leg clockwise and then counterclockwise while standing in the snow or sand. Keep your knee tight and do not wrench it. Repeat with the other leg.
Your tracks should form a rhomboid. Knee extension. Ideally a knee should straighten out to the point where the shin and the thigh form a straight line. Congenital incomplete extension cannot be corrected. Side to side movements of the shin relative to the knee and its rotation are normally very limited but still important to the health of your legs.
Because the menisci and the ligaments are highly vulnerable in these planes of loading, Russian specialists such as Vladimir Petrov usually do not recommend direct mobility training. In place of specific mobility training— involving tibia rotation, adduction, and abduction—they encourage walking and jogging on uneven surfaces, especially barefoot. They also recommend games that require frequent change of direction such as soccer, squats and lunges with weights, cross-country skiing, and hiking with a backpack.
Russian scientists warn that you cannot fix bowleggedness unless it was taken care of at an early age. People who suffer from it are especially prone to injuries from various jumps. Receiving expert coaching in depth jumping from a sky diving instructor is encouraged.
Get going! Do the following exercises every morning. Work from the extremities to the center of the body. Do not bounce, especially when it concerns your spine; control your movements. If this is too ambitious for you add five a week for the first month and then start adding ten reps a week until the target number is reached.
All the required repetitions do not have to be done back to back; you may reach you goal in multiple sets if you need the rest. Teenagers and pre-teens do not need to bother with these joint mobility drills; go straight to the Part Two exercises, Strength-Flexibility Plus More Joint Mobility.
Slowly turn your head to the left, then right. Gradually build up the range of motion. Do not roll your neck. Tuck your chin in, then tilt your head back. Tilt your head strictly to one side without twisting, then to the other side. Whether or not you complete all the repetitions of one drill before moving on to the next, switch the exercises after ten reps and come back later for more, or arrange the three neck moves in some other fashion.
You have the choice. Just remember not to combine the three into a head roll; it can be murder on your cervical spine. Draw circles with your shoulders, as big as possible and in both directions. It helps to inhale and expand your ribcage as the shoulders are moving back. Exhale and shrink your chest on the way forward. Switch directions after every ten revolutions or as often as you like. We are working from the extremities to the core.
Having finished with the neck we are going to move up the arms. Make fists, gooseneck your wrists, and bend your elbows somewhat.
Extend and hyperextend your fingers as if trying to increase their length and your wrists. As an option, you may straighten out your elbows during the extension. Work your joints from the extremities to the core. Interlace your fingers and put your wrists through all possible motions.
Nikolay Amosov, being a surgeon, does repetitions of various wrist and finger movements in addition to his published routines. Make circles with your elbow maximally bending and straightening it out. You will find that outward circles are a lot more awkward than the inward ones. It is normal. Elbow circles work your shoulders every bit as much as your elbows. Outward circles are a lot more awkward than the inward ones. Its name notwithstanding, this awesome shoulder loosener is popular with practitioners of the Russian Martial Art.
Start with your arms straight out and your palms facing down. Pivot and turn to one side while keeping your arms in the same spot in space. Both hands should turn up as much as possible, make a muscular effort in your shoulders. Switch sides still keeping your arms in one line. Both hands should turn up as much as possible.
Make a muscular effort in your shoulders. A more extreme version of the Egyptian, this exercise, practiced for bayonet fighting in the Russian military and promoted in the US by Scott Sonnon and Derek Brigham, cranks your shoulders even more, not to mention your wrists.
Cradle the ends of a smooth stick about five feet long in your palms in front of your chest. Grip the stick tight with your right. Push the stick across your chest to your left until your right fist is in front of you, your knuckles facing away. While keeping your hand close to your chest pivot around the stick—the right hand is still tight, the left still relaxed—until your elbow is way up and your knuckles are facing your chest.
You will have an easier time making this move if you imagine that you are arm-wrestling. Reverse the movement and repeat with the other hand. This will take care of whatever ROM your shoulders may have missed in the previous drills. Draw a maximally big circle with one arm or both arms. Repeat in both directions. Draw circles with your toes while making a point of achieving a maximal range of motion in the ankle: pointed toes, toes towards the nose, and in and out motion.
Use slight pressure against the ground to increase the ROM. As an alternative to this exercise you may sit on the floor or a chair, cradle your calf in your elbow, and move your foot in different planes and in circles with the help of your free hand.
Place your hands above your knees—not on your kneecaps— and make small circles inside and out. Keep the circles small! The knee was designed with a minimal lateral range of motion in mind; forcing it beyond a couple of degrees is asking for trouble. Place your hands above your knees and not on your kneecaps. Now make circles—again small! Keep the circles small. Squats have been unjustly criticized for the damage they could cause to your knees.
They could—if you do them wrong. Critics of full squats, with or without weights, usually refer to the study performed by Dr. Karl Klein at the University of Texas in the early sixties. Later research, e. But it is a totally different ball game if the shins are brought back to vertical and the weight is shifted to the heels, Note that you have to hold on to something inside of a doorway is a good choice or someone for balance. Falli omnesque vivendum eos ad, ei hinc diceret eos. Nam no nonumes volumus quaerendum, cu meis graeci audiam vis.
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