The weird thing I learned today.
5So I have my youtube account connected to all my TVs. My wife uses it for yoga classes in the morning and I think it’s really messing with my algorithm. I was going through some things and saw this odd short about stretching and flexibility. You must try this. I insist. 
Step 1: With straight legs, try to touch your toes and remember how close you get. (I got within an inch or two as I’m not much of a toe touching hobbyist). If you’re already super flexible, this will do nothing for you.
Step 2: While still standing with straight legs, hold your arms out straight and make fists with both your hands. Put your fists together and put them between your knees. Squeeze your knees together as hard as you can (against both fists) for 10 seconds.
Step 3: Try and touch your toes again and report back.
I have no idea what this sorcery is, or why it works. But now it’s your problem.
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Interesting. I may have to try this.
@yakkoTDI You don’t have to order anything online. You can do it right now
@capnjb I was too full of Mexican food to do any bending and stretching.
Hmm… Just tried it. Must be doing it wrong as no difference.
@Kidsandliz Guess you didn’t stretch your arms enough while holding your fists tightly between your knees.
Well, I can touch my toes in step one, so I guess this doesn’t apply to me. I’m curious about what gets loosened up by the squeeze though.
@Kyeh Yeah, I have no idea. I can get close, but after squeezing my fists between my knees, I can somehow put all my fingers under my feet. I don’t really want to make that video, so you will just have to trust me.
@capnjb Odd!
Huh. I got about two inches closer after the fist thing. Weird.
Reminds me of a “Trager Mentastics” community ed class my wife and I took a couple decades ago.
For any given stretching exercise, you do it once as best you can, noting your result. Then the instructor talked you through some visualization of your doing the same stretch mentally, but going further and keeping in mind how far you would go. Then you physically repeat the stretch. And , voila!, you do go further, sometimes considerably. Most notable at the time was my horizontal neck movement. (I started feeling like an owl…)
Later I had the idea of collaborating with the instructor to commit this to audio tapes, but she was in ill health (and pretty old by then). Opportunity lost.
DO try this at home, if interested.
BTW, in books on the Trager method, this visualization is not very well discussed, if at all. (Disappointed in a few I ordered.)
@phendrick [Edit window cut me off.] Important in the visualization was the mentally experiencing the FEEL of the virtual stretch and the loosening of the muscles and tendons and such.
1st time you bend over you’re stretching your leg muscles.
2nd time you’re again stretching and contracting your leg muscles.
3rd time they have loosened up enough for you to get a bit further.
Same reason you stretch before exercise.
@kalma
I don’t believe in it. You ever see a lion limber up before it takes down a gazelle?
@kalma @yakkoTDI LOL, lions don’t get old enough to worry about pulling something.
@kalma @yakkoTDI Now I want a Twinkie.
@capnjb @kalma @yakkoTDI
Good reason to get up from my office chair (before my watch reminds me to). Damn we live in weird times. It used to be that hunger, the dwindling fire, or the wildebeest got us to move. Now it’s the meh community inspiring us to action. While I’m up, maybe I should grab more coffee. Or a snack. What can I say.
@JWhirly At least you don’t have too many of the giant scorpions anymore.
I’m fascinated by the header image that shows up for this topic.
A reduced size copy, because the original is a bit big:
@rockblossom I’ll accept responsibility for a lot of dumb things I’ve done, but that one was not on me.
edit - but I like that bit of knowledge 
@capnjb Probably triggered by the “weird thing I learned” in the title.
@capnjb @rockblossom I think it’s probably @Jackinga’s fault, but the post title may have contributed.
@capnjb @rockblossom @xobzoo Definitely, my fault.
FWIW, I also failed when I tried for 5 minutes to visualize myself levitating to the ceiling.
Didn’t work.
So I tried standing on a scale to see if I could make myself lighter.
Didn’t work.
Maybe if I stopped eating for a month or two, I could move my weight on the scale down a wee bit. Ya think?
@capnjb @Jackinga @rockblossom @xobzoo I think you’d need to hang a loop down from the ceiling, grab it and do a pull up. That ought to make the scale weight become less.
While still standing with straight legs, hold your arms out straight…Put your fists between your knees.
Huh?
You didn’t say which direction to hold my arms – out to the side? No, that won’t work. Straight out in front? Maybe. And you didn’t say that I have to bend over. My arms aren’t that long and won’t reach my knees if I stand straight no matter how much I visualize it.
So what’s the point?
@Jackinga What’s the point? To prove you are not an orangutan due to short arms?
I learned that no one messes with Alaska. Not even the Alaskans. (When the tribes weren’t fighting off foreign invaders, they were fighting off competing tribes.) This also means the “purchase” of Alaska by the USA from the USSR was more like a bribe for the US to have exclusive rights to try and wrangle the territory.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-russia-gave-alaska-americas-gateway-arctic-180962714/
@pakopako Much like the “Louisiana Purcahse”, which merely bought out France’s claim to the geographic territory, most of which they had neither explored very much nor established any actual control over. But it nominally gave the US an excuse to run roughshod over it and be assholes to anyone who was there.
DON’T DO THIS
It makes mustard gas
@zhicks1987 Only if you’re full of Mexican food, as @yakkoTDI was.
@zhicks1987 If your mustard is gassing, you’re storing it wrong.
@zhicks1987