🦀 Crab shuffle squat suite

 I made a really important discovery the past year.

We've been taught to think of stretching (muscles, tendons, ligaments) with an overly simplistic and restrictive model which severely limits the potential benefits.

You think of stretching as you having to straighten your body and some body part of interest. 

revolutionary insight (I'm sure I'm not the first to realize this) 

Stretching can happen in any bent shape or unexpected posture. But we rush through the transition, where very useful and important stretches are happening, and rush into the straight extended pose where we think the "real" stretch happens. And in these common, extended pose stretches that we see in yoga, runners stretches, etc., the static posture favors certain body parts to get stretched, while neglecting 95% of that same body part that was supposed to be stretched.  For example, if you do a standing forward bend, the goal is to stretch the entire back, but only the stretchiest part of the back gets a stretch, while the upper back which really needs stretching, near the neck, shoulder, doesn't get much stretch. Not to mention all the other parts of the back you don't stretch unless you add some twisting, and contracting certain areas while doing the forward bend. Similar problem with a runners lunge or side to side leg stretch. The stretchiest part of the leg tissue gets stretched, but the rest of the leg which really needs stretching, is neglected.

enter the 🦀 Crab shuffle squat suite

This isn't the only way to exploit the important insight above, but it's a great example of how you can take a few very simple yoga poses and stretches, and turn it into a whole universe of amazing stretches by spending time and pausing, improvising in the space before and the transitions to what we used to think the "real" stretch pose was. For the purpose of the video, I go through the transitions fast just to move along so you get the idea. But in a live drill, I would go through movement and transitions more slowly, improvise, and give extra love and attention to parts that need it, that the conventional world's idea of stretching and yoga would completely overlook. 

Some important details you can't see from the video unless I point it out

I'm frequently rocking on my feet, between heel down or toes down, that will hit many areas to stretch around the feet, ankles.

Whenever my hands are planted on the ground, they're strategically placed so my shoulders and arms get stretched. 

And on top of that, I slowly move my neck through various points of motion.

To get even more advanced, if you shape and move your hands in feet in various configurations, then you get hand, finger, foot, toe stretches. 

5 for the price of 1

In other words, when you see me doing what looks like a normal runners stretch, I'm actually doing at least 5 stretches at the same time, for the same price in time and energy to only stretch one body part if I follow conventional stretching protocol. This is a huge benefit in efficiency (time, energy, money).