Poll Results: How Flexible Are You?

Overall, the con­sen­sus is,

I can move pretty well, but there’s always room for improvement.

It looks like most Taidoka are pretty com­fort­able with their cur­rent lev­els of flex­i­bil­ity, but rec­og­nize that they could ben­e­fit from more (or more effec­tive) stretch­ing. Here’s how the results for each response broke down:

How Flexible Are You?

• 52% — I can move pretty well, but there’s always room for improvement.
• 33% — I can touch my toes, but that’s about it.
• 11% — Full splits, baby.
• 4% — I can’t see or touch my toes.

This is about what I had expected.

52% of those who responded are pretty mobile. We can do most of our tech­niques with­out dif­fi­culty. We can get around the court pretty quickly and almost always get our legs in the gen­eral direc­tion they need to go in order to kick. That’s good, but we can do better.

33% say they can touch their toes, but this is where their con­tor­tion­ist tricks end. That’s too bad, but it doesn’t have to stay that way. With con­sis­tent stretch­ing, these peo­ple can be mov­ing faster and stronger within a cou­ple of months.

4% can’t see or touch their toes. Hey, we’ve all got to start some­where, right? Seriously, most peo­ple don’t begin Taido already hav­ing the abil­ity to do all the move­ments. that’s why we train. Hang in there and work on your flex­i­bil­ity, and I promise every­thing else in Taido will start to open up for you as well.

11% report being able to do a full split. This may actu­ally be a lit­tle high. I know for a fact that the num­ber of Japanese Taidoka who can do a full split is less than 10%. This has his­tor­i­cally been the case in America as well, though things could have changed over the past cou­ple of years. What about you guys in Australia and Europe? Can one in ten stu­dents really do a full split? If so, you’re doing some­thing right. Keep it up!

For the rest of us, there’s noth­ing that says we have to be con­tent with our cur­rent abil­i­ties. If we were, there would be noth­ing to train for any­way. In other arti­cles, I’ve given you some ideas for increas­ing flex­i­bil­ity for Taido. Let’s put that knowl­edge to good use.