Stretching for Athletes
Panther Video

Bill Superfoot Wallace
~55 minutes
Availble for about 10$

Bill Wallace has to be the most flexible guy I have ever seen outside the acrobats of a Chinese circus. Who better to lead a video on Stretching. This video focuses on the legs and hips, as world reknown kicker, again who better than Bill.

This video starts with a good introduction to stretching and the basics of the way muscles attach and work. This is clear and easy to understand. Bill tells us that A relaxed muscle is more resistant to injury, quicker and more easily moved. All that makes sense to me.

Moves into warmups, works from the top down. Gentle motions just to raise the muscle temperature and let your body know something is coming. After this Bill begins stretching exercises to do alone. This is comprised of a lot of static stretches keeping the tension on for counts between 2-10 seconds. None of the exercises are anything extraordinary but the order they are done in makes sense and flows nicely. This section is a little less than half an hour and Bill recommends doing them every day.

On to partner stretching. Bill stresses safety first with the partner. Another 20 mins or so is spent on these. Again nothing out of the ordinary but all good solid exercises in a nice smooth order. Bill recommedns partner stretching 2-3 times per week as it is harder on the muscles.

The third section is about the 'new fangled' stretching machines. I had one in the early 90's. That was probably when this video was first released. Anyhow the section is as good as it can get, showing a number of exercises to do while strapped into a machine. This is limited but the presentation is good.

Five minutes of review finishes the volume off in style. Bill comes across as an extremely knowledgeable and affable person. You can tell he is a great instructor with lots of experience with the material. The credit say written and performed by Bill Wallace and the preparation shows, unlike some instructionals where the presenter stumbles along never quite sure what to say Bill comes ready to deliver This video is full of traditional Karate or Tae Kwon Do class stretches. I am sure that trained kiniesologist or physiologists or whoever would wince but Bill Wallace is a trained martial arts stretchologist. I trust him to know from experience how to make me be able to kick high.

The video is clear, the sound is good, no annoying Panther slomo repeats. It is a quality show.