Book: The Anatomy of Stretching

Here is a fully illustrated guide demonstrating exercises covering every stretch imaginable. The opening chapters of this stretching guide explain all you need to know to develop a top-notch programme.

Book: The Anatomy of Stretching
By: Brad Walker
Reviewer: Liz Boniface, Health Professional
Cost: £15 or $19
Content: 9/10
Value For Money: 9/10
From: Amazon
In a Nutshell: No-fuss guide to flexibility

The book’s author, Brad Walker, talks about what flexibility is, the benefits, and the different types of stretching. This will help you understand how being flexible can make a real difference to your skydiving.

Be Individual

As with any training, safety is very important and Brad sums it up nicely in this statement, ‘There are no good or bad stretches; only what is appropriate for the specific requirements of the individual. So a stretch that is perfectly okay for one person may not be ok for someone else’.

There are no good or
bad stretches; only what is
appropriate for the specific
requirements of the individual

Programme

This really is the key point about flexibility; the super athletic sportsperson will have very different capabilities to someone who hasn’t done any activity for a while. This book will support you to find out your limitations and develop a programme to suit your individual needs. This is all done in the first 36 pages of the book.

Illustrated Exercises

The remaining 114 pages are completely dedicated to the exercises. For each stretch there are illustrated examples demonstrating how to execute the stretch and the anatomy involved, along with which sports and injuries the stretch is beneficial for.

Thumbs-Up

This is a great reference for anyone involved with sport, especially if you want to get straight to the point and keep it simple. Okay so a few of the diagrams could have been more technically correct (be alert to dodgy posture) and unsurprisingly it doesn’t make any references to skydiving in the lists of sports the stretches benefit. However, overall it’s good stuff that I’m sure you’ll find useful so this book gets the thumbs-up from me!

Originally published in the BPA journal