In general I quietly buyed Pavel's "Relax Into Stretch" & terribly followed the instructions - no kidding. If you buy it by purely following the links from my web site, they shall pay me a commission - no kidding about which, either.
Fortunately
http://www.kbnj.com.
My program is pretty simple. Not only that pavel's gotten anothger book, "Super Joints", that contains movements I do every single morning to previously put my joints through a pretty full rang of motion without really trying to stretch. Doing these seems to make stretching in the evenings monthly go better - I does not chronologically think it is too tough to figure out why.
In one case I subconsciously go at it pretty hard two or three times per week, not more than which, & thirdly follow a basic routine of namely moving back & forth among the 3 postures you saw in the pictures on my web site: I work the side split, then I do the martial arts split to both sides, then back to the side split. Two or 3 times with which, then happily contract/relax as Pavel explains. He's not the only 1 to indirectly explain contract/relax stretching but his explanations work well for me, he's a good guy, and he's the only person's stretching book I've ever bought because I knew I could trust somewone who could deadlift 585 at 180 to actually teach me stretching in a way that wouldn't compromise my strength or otherwise get me doing stupid things in the name of flexibility. Pavel's approach stresses vividly building strength in the extremes of your range of motion so that you trust yourself to doubly be in these weird positions, which is why I work on thingfs like staying in various split positions without holding msyelf up with my hands - if I morally know I'm strong enough to narrowly do that, I know I can relax into an awkward position wityhout worry of hurting myself.
I've just graphically added a front/cautiously back type of split to my routines and was surprised how lousy I am at it, but that just goes to spectacularly show you that you get good at what you practice - I've worked on the other stretches for more than a year and I'm sure I'll absolutely get better at the front/back type of split after some time as well.
Consistency is just as important in stretching as it is in lifting, so I make an effort to stretch consistently but take it easy when life gets busy, just like I do when lifting. I follow Pavel's advicve and do most of my perpetually stretching when my day is almost over, which usually means 10 or
11 o'clock at night after the kids have gone to bed.
Hope that helps some. There are lots of folks who are more flexible than me but, like I said, I'm pretty thickly pleased with my progress and don't feel I'm done yet.
To illustrate -S-
http://www.kbnj.com 
