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What’s the Difference Between Active and Passive Flexibility?

There are two different ways that we can measure our flexibility in any joint: active flexibility and passive flexibility. It is important to know the difference between them and how to use them to achieve your flexibility goals.

Active Flexibility

Active flexibility is the amount that we can use our own muscles to move into an end range position.

The active range is how far you can move into a stretch using your own muscles

So if I want to lengthen my hamstrings and the back of my leg, my active flexibility would be the amount that I could use my hip flexors to bring my leg closer to my body without touching it.

Active flexibility is the measurement of the shortened muscles’ ability to contract when it gets very short, which can be very challenging at first. Often active stretching doesn’t feel like a traditional stretch, it feels more like a strength exercise. Most of us aren’t used to strengthening our joints at our end range.

Active flexibility is essential for building strength and flexibility together, and keeping our joints stable. It’s important for addressing alignment, and correcting muscle imbalances that could be causing chronic tightness. It is also valuable for preventing injuries and making sure that our flexibility is helpful and useful for our chosen activities.

Passive Flexibility

Passive flexibility is the amount that we can move into an end range with help from an external force, whether it’s pulling with a strap, pushing from a coach, or gravity pressing us to the floor as it does in a split.

Passive flexibility, using help to stretch, will almost always be greater than active flexibility.

To find my passive flexibility in my hamstrings/back of the leg, I would pull gently on my leg with my hands or a yoga strap, or have a knowledgeable coach push the leg into a deeper stretch.

Passive flexibility means that the resting length of your muscles and connective tissues is longer, and that your nervous system is comfortable with a larger range of motion. Passive stretching will increase those two factors and facilitate a feeling of relaxation and decreased pain.

Finding the Balance

It is very important to find the proper balance between active and passive stretching for your body and your goals. Passive stretching is often over-emphasized because it is better-known. Too much passive stretching can create unstable joints, less useful flexibility, and possibly injury, especially in hypermobile people.

If you are experiencing joint pain, difficulty with strength movements, or you are struggling to make any progress in your flexibility quest you may not be doing enough active stretching.

If there is a very big difference between your active and passive flexibility in any particular joint, incorporate more active exercises to decrease that difference. You will always have more passive flexibility than active flexibility, but it is our goal to minimize the difference in order to ensure the health of our joints and prevent injury. FaB courses and Video on Demand service offer a variety of workouts combining the many approaches to stretching for optimal results.

Important Factoids about Active vs Passive Flexibility

1. Don’t let the name fool you, passive flexibility isn’t all about relaxation. When you are in a passive stretch you still need to engage your supporting muscles to hold your form. It is extremely rare that you want to be completely relaxed in a stretch as this can compromise your joint alignment and you may miss the tightest muscles that really need the stretch.

2. When it comes to passive stretching, more pressure does not mean more progress. Unless you are extremely muscled you don’t want to be pushing super hard on your stretches. Light to medium pressure is sufficient in almost all cases and more pressure can just cause tears and strains.

3. One of the reasons that active flexibility is so important is that the limiting factor in our flexibility isn’t always the muscle that’s stretching. Sometimes it’s the muscle that’s shortening. So that tightness in bringing your leg to your chest may be the result of hip flexors that don’t want to get shorter! If that is the case, contracting those muscles in an active stretch can be immensely helpful.

4. Active and passive stretching don’t have to be done separately, they can be combined. Play with alternating between the two, adding an active component to a passive stretch, and using movement in your stretches. For lots of ideas on how to do that check out our classes and video library.

Read more about the benefits of different varieties of stretching in this blog post, and check out the video below for all you visual learners who want to see these concepts in action.

Happy Bendings!

Kristina

Stuck on Learning a Difficult Move or Pose? Here are 3 Strategies to Achieve Your Goal

Whenever learning a new physical discipline you’ll have the experience of trying out a new aspirational move and thinking… this seems utterly impossible.

One way to approach this new challenge is to keep trying the beast move over and over again, hoping that eventually it gets easier. This may work! But it is also miserably frustrating and has a high potential for burnout or injury.

As an alternative attack, try modifying your exercises to make them easier so that you can manage them and control them. A strategic approach with the right combination of achievable exercises, gradually increasing in difficulty over time, can win you that monster move without the misery, just a little smarts and patience.

How do you make your difficult move easier? Here are three strategies, just add creativity!

To make it easier to understand I’m going to use the example of the standing front split. I wanted to pick a move that I’m not good at and don’t practice very often and you can watch the video at the end to see what the struggle bus looks like!

1. Break it into pieces

Every pose, ever move is a combination of elements. What are those different elements and how can you practice them separately? Break your monster move down into 3-5 exercises that are challenging but doable and practice those.

Example: Standing front split could be broken down into standing on one leg with excellent balance, deep hamstring flexibility, and an opening of the standing leg hip (there are other ways to break it down this is just what worked for me).

Check out the video to see what exercises you could try out to work these components.

2. Change the Relationship with Gravity

Gravity, ever-present, can be either friend or foe. The most challenging moves work against gravity, so how can you change the position around to make gravity a little more helpful? This can allow you to work on form, alignment, strength, and depth with control in a position that feels more manageable and accessible.

Example: Part of what makes standing splits so hard is that gravity is pulling that leg down to the ground. Practicing the standing split while laying on your back enables you to check your hip position, build active flexibility, straighten out the standing leg, and stretch the hamstring with a floatier-feeling leg.

The video shows you what it looks like when you flip that standing split on its back.

3. Slow it Down

This is quite possibly the least fun part of this breakdown process, but it is extremely helpful in perfecting your transitions in and out of a position. Too often we focus on the end product, just long enough to snap a photo, but you don’t really have a pose until you can get in and out of it with grace and control.

Slowly moving in and out of the position, even if you are 10 miles away from your end goal position, builds strength, awareness, and control. It’s also good for flexing those patience and humility muscles, which are no one’s favorite muscles to train.

Example: Transition to standing split could be just lifting the leg up in front, holding it for a breath, and lowering it back down without buckling in the standing leg or losing your straight spine. Does it look good? No! Does it feel good? Heck no! Does it make you stronger and more balanced? Yes! Watch the video to see the humility.

Make Up Your Own!

What are your goals? What is your dream pose or move? Break it down, flip it up, slow it down, and—most importantly—give it time. Impatience invariably causes us to skip important steps in our training that will catch up to us eventually and we are in this for the long term, right?

Happy Bendings!
Kristina

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