Passive vs. Active Flexibility

We all know that fleixibility is an important component of our movement practice, but is all flexibility created equal? It turns out, if we want to maximize out potential ranges of motion while also minimizing our chance of injury, we need to look a bit deeper.

Most of the time we are thinking about flexibility, we are thinking of *passive* flexibility. This is the range of motion you can get into using gravity or momentum. Think like sitting into a split or swinging your leg up.

This person is working passive flexibility by using her bodyweight to sink into the stretch

*Active* flexibility is the range of motion that you can achieve under your own control. To contrast the previous examples, this would be like lifting your leg slowly and holding it. While passive flexibility represents the maximum range of motion of our joins/ligaments, active flexibility represents the ranges of motion where we have muscular strength and control.

The reason it is important to know the difference, is that for many people, passive flexibility is *much* greater than active flexibility. This presents a big risk, since that means their body is able to access ranges that it has no strength or control in! This gap between passive and active ranges of motion are where we are most likely to get hurt in our movement practices, so it is important that we diagnose and correct it.

This person is using her active flexibility to lift the back leg up under control\

A simple test you can do is to swing your leg forward as high as you can with momentum and note how high you can get. Then lift that same leg slowly and hold it at the highest point. The first height is your passive range, and the second height is your active range. Your passive range will always be somewhat higher than your active range, but if theres is a *huge* difference, that could be a sign to work on the active side of things!

So how can you improve your active flexibility? There are many exercises and techniques, but in general, we will want to improve strength in our **end range of motion**, or in other words use stating holds and lifts right where our active flexibility stops to make that position more secure and extend it farther step-by-step.

For a simple example, lets go back to our leg swing case. If we want to improve our kicking active flexibility, find a chair or table right below the height of our active limit and put one leg on top. Keeping both that leg and the base leg straight (and without leaning back) lift the top leg slowly as high as you can, pause, and lower back down. Repeat 8-10 times and hold the last repetition as high as you can for 10s. Over time we can increase the heights of these holds and add weight to increase that range of motion and also increase your strength in those extreme ranges.

This is just a small sample meant to get you thinking about this difference, and you can find a huge wealth of info and exercises online! I hope this got you to think a little more about how to make your own training and preparation more robust.

Happy Training!

-Instructor Mike