Four Things You’re Getting (Kind of) Wrong about Stretching

1) Proper stretching is important for rope bottoms.

Yep! And all other bottoms, and all other people. Especially in terms of pain processing, stretching teaches your muscles to handle discomfort and stop tensing up so easily. But more than that, in any case where you’re going to be holding some position—be that bending over something, holding your arms up on a cross, or whathaveyou—you risk your muscles stiffening in a way that causes Bad Pain. Stretching will reduce that risk. Not to mention, if you’re like me and are a flincher or sudden-twister when hit with something particularly hard, you want that range of motion already warmed up.

Tops, you probably don’t need to be doing any sort of serious flex work, but you’d do well to warm up your wrists and shoulders. You don’t want those to tense or tire out in the middle of throwing a bullwhip. I know 99% of you do not do any sort of warm up or care about any of this, but if you happen to be reading this and find that your arms are sore the day after a scene or that you’re stopping for your sake and not the bottoms, maybe try it. Again, nothing extreme: these simple mobility drills will do you wonders.

2) Flexibility and strength are different disciplines.

Yep! And they also are essential to success in the other.
Flexibility and strength training go hand-in-hand. When you stretch and can’t go any further, it’s because the muscle has contracted to stop you, knowing it lacks the strength there. That’s your end range-of-motion, and the muscle needs to become stronger there in order for you to actively engage it and push further. Strength also builds stability around joints, which is particularly important if you’re hyperflexible.

A quick way to test if your strength can support your stretching is to test your active vs passive flexibility. Lying on your back, kick one leg up, grab your ankle, and pull (gently, as I assume you are not warmed up) it to your personal end range—where you feel a pull, but not pain. That’s your passive flexibility. Then, let go but *try to keep the leg in the same position*. You’ll need to engage those muscles to hold that there. That’s your active flexibility. It’s going to go down a bit, of course; your passive will always be stronger than your active–but if you have a vast difference between them, you might want to work on strength. You don’t need to grab a barbell or anything, though that’s fun too. You can do what you were just doing and work on holding it. (That’s the very incomplete crash course on how to increase your flexibility, by the by: bringing your mobility to its end range on a regular basis.)

This point particularly pertains to rope, in that rope often acts as that hold at the bottom’s passive end range-of-motion. If their active is not the same, they are going to develop fatigue and need to come out of that stretch much faster.

3) I saw this person in this crazy shape. I’d get injured if I tried to do that, but they are super bendy so it’s fine.

Maybe! There are a lot of talented bendy circus-y strong bottoms out there. But it’s also quite possible to be able to get down into the splits or go into a backbend and be doing it in ways that are incredibly unhealthy. Proper form is important, and many people find that when in a flexibility class following an instructor’s alignment cues they suddenly can do less than what they thought. Your body being *able* to do something doesn’t always mean it *should* do the thing. One place you can really see this is with backbends—check for ribs flaring out, or for a sharp angle in the bend, as opposed to a smooth curve. This happens when your lower back is overcompensating for a lack of extension in other areas, which is going to put extra pressure on your spine eventually leading to injury. In a bridge pose, you also might see shoulders that are not above wrists/bent elbows. I recently uploaded a “before” photo of a backbending pose, and in it I can see the sharp bend mentioned before, because my thoracic (upper back) mobility isn’t quite there. It’s very possible that when I upload the end image in another two months here I’ll have *less* of a bend—but if that is the case it will be a healthier one that I can continue to work on, as opposed to one that will likely eventually harm me. All this to say: people may be able to get into crazier shapes than you, but they might also be setting themselves up for more injury. When you start bending healthily, you may appear to “lose” flexibility, but all things come with practice.

(Note: If you’re actually training your flexibility or want to assess your backbends, you can see the sharp angle I was referring to here. On the other side of things, you can see a beautiful rounded backbend where the spine is bending evenly across the board in this photo of Fet’s very own @RopeKitteH.)*

3) You should always stretch before a work-out, or before a scene

Maybe! But not if it is the first thing you are doing, especially when you wake up. Stretching is not a warm-up. I cannot reiterate that enough. Stretching cold muscles is the best way to pull them and be totally out of commission. The first thing we do in contortion class, for example, is run a few laps—but if you aren’t setting up for an exhaustive flexibility-based work-out, anything that ups your heart rate is fine. You want to increase your body’s muscle temperature, which will make your muscles more pliable and therefore less likely to tear in ways you don’t want them to. Take a brisk walk around the dungeon to see what’s going on and wake your hips up from sitting in the car. If music is on, dance a bit. Anything but jumping right into it. Working on your active flexibility in order to increase flexibility overall, as per number 2, should never be done before a scene or at the beginning of a work-out. Which brings us to…

4) Holding yoga poses is a great way to stretch.

Point the first: I so often see bottoms, generally rope bottoms, doing full splits, forward bends, etc, and holding them before a scene. Depending on your goals, this may not be the right way to prepare. In fact, research would show that holding static stretches does absolutely nothing in terms of injury prevention(1), though that isn’t to say it isn’t useful for increasing flexibility. On the other side of things, *dynamic* flexibility significantly reduces risk of injury(2) (noting, of course, that these are studies on athletes—as you might imagine, not a lot of research on this exists pertaining to kink!)

What is dynamic flexibility? That’s what you’re going to find in a yoga flow. You move your body in a controlled way, increasing your range of motion a little each time, without ever holding anything taut. Flowing back and forth in cat-cow is one a lot of people know. I like to do a fan-kick type motion in and out to warm up my hips. They can simply be shoulder rolls. Antranik’s videos on these (not to mention his whole site) take you through a great deal, and you can choose according to what will be most useful for you.

Point the second: Yoga is a fantastic discipline, but it is a practice that is focused on many things—the mental/spiritual, strength, balance. Your flexibility likely will grow in a yoga class, but if that’s your end-goal it isn’t going to be nearly as efficient as other things. If you’re looking to train your flexibility, I recommend seeking out your local circus school.

Point the third: Doing crazy stretches might be impressive, but it isn’t going to be helpful before your scene. Stretching can easily create micro-tears in your muscles—which is fine; that’s how they grow, and those generally go away in 24-48 hours—but it isn’t what you want pre-getting hurt. What you want to do is limber up. That is, bring your body to your normal range of motion, but do not go past it as we tend to when pushing in a static hold. I’ll point you once more to the mobility video I referred tops to above. This is what you want; more on the side of limbering up than stretching.


I hope that all made sense. I’m never quite sure how to write conclusions to this sort of thing that don’t sound like a high school essay, so I’ll just say that I am not a medical professional nor am I an expert in this—just sharing the things I’ve learned since beginning seriously studying flexibility. If you’d like to join in on the conversation on this writing on Fetlife, you can do so by clicking here. I do occasionally give flexibility workshops, which you can best find out about by following me on Fetlife and/or subscribing to my newsletter (and by asking your favorite event hosts to schedule a class with me! (-; )


(1) Pope, Rodney Peter, et al. “A Randomized Trial of Preexercise Stretching for Prevention of Lower-Limb Injury.” Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, vol. 32, no. 2, 2000, p. 271., doi:10.1097/00005768-200002000-00004.

(2) Labella, CR, et al. “Effect of Neuromuscular Warm-up on Injuries in Female Soccer and Basketball Athletes in Urban Public High Schools.” Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, vol. 166, no. 1, Jan. 2012, p. 73., doi:10.1001/archpediatrics.2011.1477.