I can touch my toes!

For my whole life I have never been able to touch my toes. I have often been told that it was because of tight hamstrings but I never really thought much of it as it really didn’t affect my daily exercise and activities. In my effort to become a better cyclist I have been stretching after my rides to stay flexible but even after months of stretching my hamstrings I was no closer to touching my toes than I was on day 1.  I started to research the subject and as it turns out my issue isn’t with tight hamstrings after all it’s with not properly bending at my hips and instead trying to bend at my lower back. The “fix” is easy as a specific set of stretching exercises that had me touching my toes in a matter of minutes. Basically the progression is retraining your brain/body into accepting it can do this. This video explains the progression very well:

In case you are a skeptic here is another video showing how it works on someone who could not touch their toes beforehand.

Now I still have some tight hamstrings but I can at least touch my toes now.  I still need to do the progressions after a day or so but that should subside once I retrain my body.