There are many ways that you can injure yourself. Some are obvious: ice on a road when riding your bike; a hole in the paverment to twist your ankle while running. Others are less so. Footballer Kirk Broadfoot certainly didn’t expect to injure himself cooking an egg in a microwave, but, when it exploded, he missed Rangers next match. Food should come with a health warning – especially when you’re stretching.

For the last two nights I’ve only had time to stretch shortly after large meals. I didn’t think anything of it. I know not to swim on a full stomach or to run while stuffed full of biscuits but I didn’t expect it to have any effect on my stretching. I was wrong.

While stretching out was fine – reaching up, extending arms and legs, anything that involved length – as soon as I start to curl, whether doubling over or crunching up – I felt like I was jumping on a bag pipe in my stomach. “OOOHHHHHAAAAHHHHAWGGHHHHH!” I went, just like the lovely sound of a bag pipe. There are certain moves that you can’t do with a full stomach.

I guess this should be obvious. You can’t eat two hot dogs, chips, and a chip butty and a yoghurt (because I’m being healthy!) and expect it to go from plate to stomach and to vanish on the way. My stomach is full of the food I’ve just eaten. It doesn’t disppear in 30 minutes. Digestion takes time.

So, I share this update with a warning that the only thing you should stretch after a large meal is your waistband.

Last night I tried some stretching exercises with a medicine ball. I say “medicine ball” but I actually mean “death ball”. Blimey, Charlie, jings, crivens – whatever you do, don’t use a medicine ball at the top of your stairs.

A confession – I’ve been working out on the landing at the top of my stairs. There’s a large mirror on the wall and I find it helpful to use it to check my form. There’s just enough room to stretch out my arms, though sometimes I do have to bend into the spare bedroom, but it’s a decent space for watching videos on an iPad and myself in the mirror. Until last night.

Last night, I thought I would try using a medicine ball. My wife had one from when she was pregnant because pregnant woman look like like big balloons. They sit on it and say things like “Oooh, that’s nice” and “wouldn’t this be nice if I had a KitKat?” and “where’s my KitKat?” and “you can’t expect a pregnant woman to get her own KitKat, can you?”. Or was that just my experience?

Anyways, as I had a medicine ball, I thought I’d give it go and tried:

Before I realised this was advanced level balancing and I needed something easier to start with like:

Until I realised that even on a beginners level of bouncing on a big bouncy ball, I had no balance and was rolling back and forth on the landing with each roll taking me closed to the edge of the stairs.

I didn’t even know a medicine ball could roll. I thought another name for it was a “stability ball”. Stable. Not moving. A good thing when you’re on the first floor and trying to avoid plummeting faster down the stair than a rocket powered slinky.

It was getting dangerous and as the moves progressed to lying on my back and rolling the ball beneath me I could see (upside down, as I was on my back) that I was getting closer and closer to lying not just upside down but also one level down in a crumpled heap.

So, the moral of the story is this: medicine balls are tough, start with an easy video, but most of all, don’t use one at the top of your stairs as it won’t be a medicine ball you need but a medicine phone to call a medicine ambulance to take you to the medicine hospital for lots of medicine.

After 15 days, I’ve discovered that in Strava, when you add in a new activity, it will show you the activities in order of how often you are using them. For years, they just showed ride, run and swim but after 15 days, Yoga (which I’m using to record all my stretching) is now my number one sport.

People say there are only 24 hours in the day, which is true, but only if you have never worked a night shift when the clocks go back an hour.

I used to work as a hospital porter and for six years I would always end up with the night shift when the clocks go back an hour. The night shift was long to begin with. It started at 11pm and finished at 8am. Most nights, the clock striking 2am was dispiriting because you’d already been working for three hours and still had another six to go. On the night the clocks went back an hour, it was even worse. When the clock struck two, the clock had to be moved back to 1am and you’d been working three hours and then had another seven to go. Even worse, you didn’t get an extra hours pay. The logic being that you also got paid the same when then clocks went forward an hour. (Not that I ever worked that day!).

So, unless you’re working on the last Saturday in October, trying to find extra time in the day can be hard. This week I’ve struggled to find 30 minutes to stretch as I’ve returned to work after the holiday and I’ve had my mum visiting. Yesterday, the only spare time I had was lunchtime. Luckily I also had the office to myself so I closed the door and tried some stretches over lunchtime.

Unlike day one, I didn’t strip down to my pants. That would be have been too embarrassing to explain if someone walked in the room. Me, my pants, groin circles, and YouTube videos of men in shorts flexing. Instead I would have to lie and make up an excuse as to what I was doing half naked near my computer.

“What are you doing?”

“Err…” I’d say, “I was watching pornography”

“No you weren’t, you were doing a sun salutation, weren’t you?”

“No! Not me! What kind of man do you think I am? It was porn, I tell ya, purn porn!”

Along with the door, if you’re streching in the office you also need to think about windows. My office is overlooked by a taller building. It’s largely empty as it awaits redevelopment but there are a few active floors where I can see people moving around. I thought it best then to stretch away from the window so that prying eyes could not see down into my room and my hip circles.

At this point, my large room has reduced to a small circle where I am neither visible from a window and within arms reach of the door to reach an arm out and keep it closed if someone else walked in.

This was no longer stretching, it was an exercise in voyeur management.

I decided that maybe a full stretching routing was not practical so I switched instead to stretching at my desk, where no one would think it strange to see an arm outstretched as I could just making a vigorous point on a Zoom call.

And because I was at my desk, no one could see my legs, so I could sit in my pants. Ideal.

Either way, working out in the office is tricky and you may find, if someone walks in, that you only wish you could turn back time by an hour…

I don’t know what I’ve just watched.

In my search for the videos to follow along to on YouTube I’ve encountered all sorts of videos. Some are presented by lithe models, others by buff men, some use a garden, others a house which is lit as well as any studio. These videos can be professional, amateur or, well, whatever the heck ‘Bob & Brad’ are doing. I have no words to describe their video. I think I will leave it one YouTube commentator who said:

“I don’t know how two guys can be so helpful, so funny, and so boring, all at once… but I like it.”

And if that comment doesn’t help you then at least watch the first 20 seconds as Bob & Brad have their own theme song. It’s quite something.

For something more traditional, and nice and local (at least for me as a fellow Glaswegian) then I can recommend ‘Yoga With Mark’:

Six days of stretching and I still don’t know if I’m doing it right. Stretching should be easy, right? It’s just reaching with attitude. Or relaxing on purpose. I can reach. I can relax. So, why can’t I stretch?

I think part of the problem is that I find it difficult to work out what I’m doing. The instructions on the video will say “left” and I think “right”. If the instructor says raise leg leg, I’m raising my right. I don’t think I’m an idiot, so we can rule out a lack of any ability to follow basic instructions. Instead I think it’s the way most videos are filmed. When someone says “left” and are facing the camera, they raise their arm on the right hand side of the screen. Now some people may say that “yes, Andrew, you are an idiot as they are clearly raising their left arm” but, for me, it throws me off everytime. There should be an option, like computer games, to reverse the controls. Two videos. One where the instructor says “left” and the other where they say “right” even though they’re doing the same move.

Equally, if we’re talking about making the perfect introductory YouTube video for stretching, why are they all made by people who are really, really bendy? I don’t look like they do. I can’t lower my head beneath my foot while extending my arms above my head while balanced only a single buttock. But they can. And they do. I want to see someone struggle to bend. I want to see me on my screen. So, instead of ‘Yoga with Adrienne’ what about ‘Yoga with Adrienne and Andrew’? I could stand beside her and when she moves smoothly through more bends than a slinky, I struggle to pat my head while rubbing my belly.

And, if any YouTubers are reading this, just think about how much money you would make as you could release three videos instead of one? One left, one righty, one with a numpty. Same moves, three videos. Easy.

Next up on my thirty day of stretching I’m going to try a fitness app.

And, on day six, am I feeling any different? Possibly. Maybe. Still too early to tell. I want to reduce tightness in my right hip and I think it has improved. But after only few days it’s too early to tell.

Day 6 Videos

Last year I challenged myself to complete 31 days of exercise. You can read about it here. At the end I offered the following tips:

You need a plan

AND

You need to think about it before you start.

So, this year, I haven’t prepared a plan and I haven’t given this any thought as I start a new 31 day challenge to stretch every day of January.

This year, to try and change my attitude to exercise, I’m going to try and learn more about stretching, Yoga and taking care of my body.

I’ve never stretched before exercised, just as I don’t snack before having a meal or wash before having a bath. I’ve always thought stretching and warming up was something you did by doing the very thing you’re warming up for. If you want to warm up for a run – run the first mile. Easy.

But, having finished the year with various niggles, pains and stiff muscles, I thought it would be more challenging to try and stretch than to try and repeat last year’s challenge. Let’s try something new instead.

So, yesterday I started by… not reading my tips from last year. Instead I picked two videos at random from YouTube which were picked purely on a “20 mins stretching” search “morning stretching” and then picking videos by two men rather than two women, which isn’t sexist. Or maybe it is. My sole thought was “men stretch differently from woman because male and female bodys are different”. By the end of the month, I’ll work out if this is true or whether I have just been an idiot.

To continue my lack of preparation, I didn’t use a mat or even change in shorts and t-shirt. I used the carpet, I took off my trousers (as even I knew that you can’t stretch in jeans) and followed the videos. Was it graceful? No! Was it decent? Possibly not either! Did it work? Well, I do feel slightly less stiff than before I started. Whether that’s physical or the placebo of thinking I’m better because I’ve done something and if I’ve done ‘something’ then I must feel better. I don’t know. But I’ve got 30 days to find out. (And to find proper clothes).

Day 1 Videos