by: Charles Van order
As read in our last article “Stretching For Health” stretching can be a vital yet easy way to help your body stay healthy. By creating a stretching routine at least once a day, though twice is a little more beneficial, can help you enjoy less pain as well as avoid unnecessary injury to your body. Here are basic techniques for stretching that can be incorporated into an easy program that you can follow. So lets start with the basic rules to stretching.
As beginning any exercise routine, it is best to start with a warm up. Because we won’t be doing any high stress action, the warm up can be simple. Usually any low intensity exercise; jogging in place, slow paced walking, jumping jacks, etc. for about five to ten minutes is usually enough. By warming up the muscles it will help to prevent an injury when stretching.
You will want to be sure, when you are in position of stretching, to hold your stretch for at least 60 seconds. Though it may not sound like a lot of time, you may want to be sure to time yourself. When you are in a stretch, time can seem to move very slowly. If you are unable to hold your stretch for 60 seconds, try holding it for at least 30 seconds and then coming back to that stretch for another 30 seconds later.
Allowing your muscles to bounce while stretching can actually cause small tears in your muscles. As these tears heal, it can cause scar tissue on the muscle and make it tighten and become less flexible. Since we are stretching to add flexibility, it is not a good idea to avoid this.
Just as in performing any exercises, breathing is extremely important. Don’t forget to to do it. Breathing is great for relaxing. Simply by focusing on your breathing, it will allow you to relax more and possibly get a better stretch out of your muscles. And by taking in deep breaths, you are allowing more oxygen to enter the body to feed the blood and the muscles.
It is good to know that we perform stretching to not only make our bodies more limber, but also to help avoid pain. So keep in mind that you should have pain free stretches. If at any point, you are start to feel pain during a stretch, you have gone to far. Better to stretch the muscle until it is tight but again, without pain. You will be surprised on how quickly you will become more limber. Best not to try to rush it and chance injury.
Thinking about it, you wouldn’t lift weights with only one side of your body would you? Of course not, you would look pretty silly with only being toned and muscular on one side of your body. With this in mind, you can trust me when I say that your body can easily look just as miss proportioned if you stretch one side of your body more then the other. With this in mind, it is good to keep in mind to stretch both sides of the body evenly.
If you have a standard workout regiment that you do, stretching can be even more beneficial. It is good to start with light stretching before your exercise. This will help loosen the muscles and get them ready. After you have completed your workout, you will want to do a deeper more fuller stretching. Since the muscles are usually much warmer after the workout, you may find the stretching to be a little more easy and you can fuller deeper stretches.
Do you currently do any stretching exercises? Do you think that stretching is a major benefit? Leave your opinion below and let us know what your ideas are.
