Today is Day 1 of my 30 day stretch challenge.
The rules are simple, stretch everyday for 20 minutes, for 30 days straight. At the end, see the results.
All good challenges have a before and after. For me, the metric to measure is touching my toes. I can do it at the moment if I keep my knees soft and glide into it, but that’s a bit slack, so the rule is knees locked, 5 seconds to loosen into it.
Currently that leaves me at two inches from finger to toe.
I’m not in the least surprised. I have always been inflexible, ever since I was a young child. Fortunately, that lack of stretchiness hasn’t had too many repercussions – a back injury when I was 16 and when I was 27 notwithstanding.
Since hitting 30, I realised that my good luck was most likely running out. I read online of people my age talking about aches and pains while living totally normal lives; meanwhile, there are people playing in the NFL, NBA, and UFC who are in their 40s. Their secret? No one knows, but apparently stretching makes a big difference.
So, here we are, doing my stretches. The 20 minutes is focused on the lower body; quads, groin, calves, hamstrings, and whatever pigeon stretches.
I’ll let you know what the progress looks like on July 23rd!