I tried this “easy” yoga pose for 30 days to try and fix my flexibility—here’s what actually happened

I’ve dipped in and out of yoga for the last few years, always finding the movements comforting and (whisper it) relatively easy.

So, when I tried to do a seated forward fold—after reading this piece—and found it incredibly difficult, I was left humbled. My hamstrings screamed and my mind couldn’t settle.

I was annoyed that something that once came to me so easily now felt difficult. So, I decided to try and do something about it.

For 30 days, I did the seated forward fold stretch three times a day—holding it for 60 seconds each time. Here’s what happened to my body and mind.

It hit my hamstrings hard

When I first started practicing this pose, the only place I felt it was in my hamstrings, at the back of my thighs.

I was surprised at just how tight these muscles were, so I asked physical therapist Dr Rockie Felder to explain what might have caused this. She said that my desk job was the likely culprit.

“When you're sitting for a long time at your desk, your knee is bent and that actually shortens your hamstring,” explains Felder, who has recently launched a specialist online desk worker program.

“So when you stand up and bend over [or perform a forward fold] your knee is straight, so you’re elongating that muscle and those muscle fibers.”

After about four days, when my hamstrings felt a little less tight, I finally started to feel the stretch in my lower back. Within two weeks, I could feel it in my calves as well.

I made quick progress

I recorded myself doing the pose every few days and was surprised at how much deeper I was able to move into the stretch after a couple of weeks.

I wondered if this was because I was simply getting more comfortable in the pose, but Felder said it was more likely that I was undergoing some physical adaptations.

She explained that while a one-off stretch won’t make much difference to your muscles, repeatedly stretching will elongate muscles and restore extensibility.

“Muscles are really tight after sitting. If you stretch them, they get a little longer, but after two hours they go back to where they were,” she explains.

“But over time, if you stretch repeatedly, it goes back to [being] a little bit longer. And then if you stretch again and again and again, over time in those 30 days, you actually will gain flexibility in your muscle fibers. It takes consistency and time.”

I started to look forward to it

I got little enjoyment out of this experiment during the first week, because I found it uncomfortable. This was doubly frustrating, as inward-facing yoga poses like this one are meant to be calming.

Speaking to Fit&Well about this pose, yoga teacher Amy Baxter said: “Energetically, this pose calms the nervous system. As we bow inward, we send a signal to turn inward, creating a sense of safety as the sensitive front of the body is well protected.”

It wasn’t until my hamstrings eased up a little that I could relax into the pose and practice some deep breathing.

Once I managed that, I started to look forward to doing it as an easy way to get a screen break or relax at the end of the day.

It’s now a regular part of my practice and one of my favorite ways to stretch my hamstrings.