Stop Trying to Touch Your Toes!! (NOT GOOD)

If you have been told that being able to touch your toes is a good barometer of your overall fitness and flexibility, then you need to watch this video. Here I’m going to show you why you not only want to stop trying to touch your toes and instead do the move I show you as an alternative. All you ha

what’s up guys jeff cavaliere athleanx. com do me a favor and do this take your hands reach down and touch your toes now do me another favor don’t ever do that again you see people think that touching their toes is in some way a barometer of overall flexibility it’s something that you should be able to do and if you can do it you’re good to go as a matter of fact I think they’re almost giving yourself a false confidence and you’re reinforcing dysfunction when you think that that’s what you should be doing because I can get anybody that can’t touch their toes right now to touch their toes or pretty damn close all I have to do is say hey instead of being in this position here where your butt is arched your back is arched here and you try to reach down just let your butt tuck under and then reach down like this and let your hands drop down in front of you and reach we’re all going to be able to do that and all I’m saying is it’s not good as a matter of fact it to me is more of a warning sign that you have a lot of dysfunction that allows you to do that because what we’re looking at is the ability to create thoracic rounding kyphosis something we don’t want what we’re looking at is a posterior tilt to get in that position we don’t want we’re looking at the ability to just sort of let our arms hang unsupported with no real stability through the shoulder blades we don’t want that we don’t want any of this stuff so what we should do instead is instead of trying to reach down try to reach up do this instead of when I promise you and if you’re obsessed with being in that sort of bent forward position you’ll actually see an improvement by doing this as opposed to just working on that here’s what I want you to do here’s the this I want you to take one foot we’re gonna work both sides and I want you to stand about three foot lengths away from the wall so if I take one foot here and I put another one back here and another one here that’s the back the line for me about three foot lengths away I take one leg and I put it up here into the wall alright so this is my stride position instantly what that does is it allows us to keep a much flatter back okay a more into anterior tilt or slide into your tilt as opposed to all that posterior tilt then I put my hands up on the wall here and all I’m trying to do is make my chest touch the wall if we can to get there I’m gonna have to lean forward not down forward and that’s gonna place an intense stretch of the hamstring if you have hamstring tightness this is going to reveal it because we are in that anterior tilt and what I do is I want to try to get my hands up as I reach forward so if you come around here you can see that I’m trying to get that chest to get a little closer to the wall here keep my pelvis square I’m not allowing myself to twist in any direction and the other I’m looking square at the wall and trying to reach up look what this does it gets the pelvis in the right position number one it actually provides a little bit of a calf stretch because we’re in that dorsiflexion at the bottom and I’m also trying to get myself into thoracic extension this is what we want we don’t want to reinforce dysfunction this way we’re going to get into the thoracic extension the thing that we all lack so we get up here we’re trying to get higher that keeps us here and we try to approximate and get closer to the wall you work on holding this for 30 seconds as opposed to holding this for however long you can and of course I switched it up and I work on the other side I do the same thing I drop back I square up I’m in that flat back at least or the slight anterior tilt I reach up here and I try to get myself closer to the wall and I could tell you yes I do have hamstring tightness ‘iz they’re being revealed this way as opposed to being hidden by that posterior drop there that’s not doing a damn thing for helping you or getting where you need to be so if you really wanted no drama of where you’re at do this instead of this and I promise you you guys are gonna have much more information for you that’s gonna reinforce what you do you go back and do a deadlift you go back you do any lower body compound movement it’s gonna put you in a better position by not lying to yourself that you got some great flexibility that you actually don’t have so if you guys are looking for programs where we talk about all the details because they obviously matter and we don’t mislead you with the things that don’t really matter at all you can find them over at athleanx. com if it found a little helpful leave your comments and thumbs up below let me know awesome I’m going to cover I’ll do my best to do that for you in the days and weeks ahead if you have already done so guys could subscribe at area notifications so you never miss the new video when we pull one out alright guys see you soon [Music] you