I’ve been holding off on reviewing Legendary Flexibility by Jujimufu, mainly because until I tested some of the methods, I didn’t want to heap praise or write something negative about the book. The why for me writing this review is because there aren’t any reviews on it to begin with. I don’t normally take the time to write reviews for Goodreads, mainly because I figure a review is extremely subjective. Who am I to say whether Game of Thrones, or some other book is any good.
In the case of this E-book though, it is about a very specific subject– flexibility. Something I am interested in because I am not really that flexible, or at least not in the ways I’d like to be. So I felt that since this book is more about the ‘how’ of getting flexible, than maybe I can offer some critique on this.
I waited a long time to purchase this, I was hoping that somewhere on the internet a review of it would pop up, and then I would know if it was worth reading. I didn’t want to read something that just happened to be a rehash of Thomas Kurz’s Stretching Scientifically. Otherwise, I’d just save myself some money and buy that book, or at the very least check it out from the library.
I’m a big fan of Jujimufu, I think he is a fascinating guy, and I’m impressed by the things he can do. He outweighs me by quite a bit; and yet he is more flexible, acrobatic and probably athletic than me.
When I was younger, I was attempting to do what he was doing, before I was aware of him. I lifted weights getting up to around 190-lbs, was able to do back flips, aerials and the like. Yet, I lacked the mobility he had, and had a nagging back injury. Eventually that all caught up to me, and lifting became damn near impossible for me to do. So I transitioned to Obstacle Course Racing, and dropped down to a more natural weight for myself – 160-lbs. Although, I am still inflexible and nursing stupid injuries, I finally decided I needed to get flexible.
I first read Kurz’s book, and then relented and bought Jujimufu’s. Reading them on back to back days. I was sold on Juji’s method, as well as Kurz’s. Kurz’s book goes into the the method and the science of flexibility training. Juji’s book uses similar concepts, but in a slightly different way, and is less technical.
What I liked about Jujimufu’s book is that it is not only about getting flexible, and giving you his personal approach to stretch training, but it also talks about how to engineer your lifestyle to incorporate flexibility. Like types of clothing to buy, ways to incorporate flexibility into your day-to-day routines, diet and supplementation to improve stretching performance.
The big takeaway though is that when you train flexibility it can’t be an afterthought to everything else you do in your training, it needs to be the focus. If you want to do the splits, then your gym sessions need to be centered around ways to improve your splits. This means doing sets and reps like you would weightlifting for the different shapes you want to be good at i.e. the front splits, middle splits, squat, and etc. You also need to build strength in these positions. You can get flexible doing passive stretching or something similar to yin yoga, but both Jujimufu and Kurz will tell you that it is quicker and more efficient to build strength in a shape then it is to passively stretch into it.
Kurz emphasises isometrics to build strength and tension, and Jujimufu says that it can work but prefers to use weights to build tension and strength. Which, I have to admit seems to work pretty damn well.
I’m in my off season for OCR, so right now my goal is to improve flexibility and build up my strength. With Jujimufu’s method I feel like I can maybe accomplish both these things. This training is pretty hard, and you really need to check your ego at the door when you go to the gym. Mainly, because you will be lifting way lighter than you are used to. When you lift a weight, at the bottom of a rep let it to pull you into a little bit of a stretch. This is similar to old school bodybuilders would do with things like chest flys. You will be sore – trust me.
I found that going too heavy causes me to tense more, so I look pathetically weak using 20-pound dumbbells for my chest exercises. The goal here though isn’t for me to lift heavy, but to get a little bit of a stretch through my pec minor, and to open myself up. For any office worker I can’t recommend this enough.
One of my big focuses is improving my squat position, and I find that using Jujimufu’s methods really is helping. I start off doing a warm up, going through different odd stretches and yoga poses to create flow that goes in and out of the squat. Then I add weight to search for that tension, doing sets and reps of different types of squats. Just going super light searching for tension, and trying to relax into it before completing the rep. This seems to work really well.
I will be honest, his method isn’t the only method I am using. I’m also using stuff from Tim Anderson’s Original Strength website. Working on nervous system type stuff for my warm ups typically. Rolling, crawling, breathing, core work, and all sort of other odd movements.
On days I’m not getting to the gym I am usually doing the circuits from Olympic weightlifter Jerzy Gregorek’s book The Happy Body, which is also using weights for stretching. It is a somewhat different approach, doing things in a circuit training fashion, but keeps with the theme that stretching should be done as a sort of resistance training using light weights.
So far I am impressed with how my squat form is progressing. It isn’t perfect, but I am getting to the point where moving in an out of the position for seemingly ordinary tasks is getting easy.
Legendary Flexibility is a must read for anyone who is interested in flexibility. Don’t overlook the book just because he is a big bodybuilder and not some sort of yogi.