Head-To-Toe Stretching

Here’s is my take on a program for gaining the head to toe stretch. Enjoy! This is the Kit Laughlin release I recommend doing every 4-5 days in the beginning.

Okay guys, welcome.  I know a lot of you have requested this over the last few months, and finally today, I get to deliver.

As you can see, we’re looking at head to toe today.  If you haven’t already watched my ballistic stretching video, I suggest you pause this video now, get the last video I posted, check that out, watch that.  Understand what I’m talking about in it, then come back and watch this one.
If you have watched it, lets go through it,

You want to get your head to your toe.  That is an admirable goal for most.  It is achievable for most people I think.  There’s certain proportions that won’t favour it, but I think 99% of you will get there.

Now, there are a couple of pre requisites before you start this program.  First, we want a hands to floor pike, about as good as I’m demonstrating now.

We also want a 25% bodyweight Jefferson Curl, for at least 5 reps, 10 being better, in my opinion, for 3-4 sets at a comfortable RPE.

Obviously as well, you need a set of ‘Wu Shoes’ so go out and buy some Feiyues.  Buy the real ones, not the french ones.

To do the stretching, we’re using pulsing type stretching.  If you watched the ballistic video, we want to have a nice rhythm.

When you start this one, your rhythm is going to be necessarily quite slow.  It is very intense stretching, particularly if you’re not used to flat footed pike stretching.  It does pass.  You have to stick with this program every day of the week.  You can get away with 5.  6 is better, 7 is even better.

For the first two weeks, you’re going to be fucking sore in your calves, your hamstrings, whatever’s taking it.  Just keep ploughing through it.  I promise you by day 14 at the most, the DOMS will be gone.  You’ll be increasing range all this time, so that will be encouraging you to hopefully stick to it.  If not, just plough through the DOMS.

Trust me on this one; it goes away.  Then you’re left with a nice new level of flexibility.

One thing you’re going to want to look at – by the end of Week 1, or every time, you want to hit twice a week the Kit Laughlin roll stretch stick on your calves.  I’ve found that invaluable, and so has everyone else who’s done this program.

The rest of it is based on my own tinkering and experimenting.  What I’ve come up with is what I feel is the best fit for the most amount of people.

It’s not the be all end all.  There’s many ways to skin a cat.  This is based off enough data points from having put enough people through the process.

I feel this is the average process.

The average process, and we’ll go through the exercises, is we’re going to start with 3x90s of a calf stretch, a straight leg calf stretch with locked knees in 3 different foot positions, for each head of the gastrocnemius and soleus.

Then, we’re going to do 3×72 pulses, and leave it at that.  We’ll go through the countdown and the technique; I’ll demo each stage of this process.

If you want to speed up the process, and this one really does speed it up, in the morning as you get up, you want to do 3×36 pulses in the morning before breakfast.  It definitely helps a lot, makes a massive difference.  It is necessarily quite an evil beast.

Anyway, I hope you like it.  Give me your feedback and we’ll speak later.

Pre Requisites

• Hands to Floor Pike
• 25% bw J-Curl

Routine

A: 3x90s stretch for calfs (3 positions)

B: 3×72 pulses

Optional: 3×36 AM pulses

Same Side Elbow to Toe

1: Fist + thumb

2: Fist + 1/2 thumb

3: 4 Fingers

4: 3, 2, 1 fingers

5: Toe

Opposite Elbow to Toe

1: Fist + thumb

2: Fist + 1/2 thumb

3: 4 fingers

4: 3, 2, 1 fingers

5: Toe

Head to Toe

1:  Fist + thumb

2: Fist + 1/2 thumb

3: 4 fingers

4: 3, 2, 1 fingers

5: Toe