Quote Originally Posted by liza View Post
I have a running book that touts AIS (active isolated stretching, done with a rope), as being revolutionary. I haven't done it much myself, but I've done it a little bit when I was running a lot and I found that the calf exercises involving wrapping the rope around one's foot and either pulling back or rolling to the inside or outside did do an excellent job stretching small muscles in the calf that can be hard to reach.
I have an AIS book that is wonderful, but dang, the lower body routine alone takes something like 45 minutes. So I tend to pick and choose exercises, depending on what hurts. I do the IT band/hip flexor exercises a lot. AIS definitely makes a difference if you make a routine of it- something that I managed to keep up for all of a week, I think.