The Benefits of Stretching For Your Health and Fitness
Written by Joseph Chew on February 19th, 2009Your body is meant to be able to bend down low and pick up something on the floor, or reach something high up on a shelf. This is all down to the flexibility you have in your body to bend and flex.
Learning to stretch and increasing your flexibility will make these tasks alot simpler to do (if you were finding them hard to do in the first place) and you should definately give it a try.
So, What Exactly Is Stretching?
Stretching is the act of straghtening parts of your body or your body as whole and stretching some or all of your limbs.
How Should I Do It?
* Regardless of what age you are, stretching can be done by all.
* With age, your degrees of flexibility vary and also too with frequency of practice. Stretching more allows you to lose less flexibility as you ago.
* Stretching can be incorporated into your daily life and should be done every day. It doesn’t require much of your time anyway.
* You should stretch before taking on any vigorous exercises and is important to a training routine.
* A very common stretch athletes do is the sit and reach, where the sit on the floor with their legs extended out in front of them. They then reach for their toes with the fingertips.
* You should stretch for roughly 10 minutes before exercise. This is enough time to allow your muscles to flex in preperation for hard muscle movements you are planning to do.
How Does Stretching Benefit Me?
* Increases Your Movement – You have more movemenet capability as your muscle and tendon lengths increase with stretching. This will help you avoid injuries from occuring.
* Perform More Skills – Jumping higher in basketball or turning faster in football are things that you will better be able to do with a wider range of movement, allowing for a more active way of life.
* Prevents Injury – When your muscles and joints are more flexible, it takes more for you to ‘pull a muscle’ or ‘tear a tendon’ as you have more give in your limbs. It also helps you recover faster and better if you do get injured.
* Reduce Muscle Tension – It is less likely for your muscles to contract and build up tension if you regularly stretch them out.
* Have More Energy – You are more driven and energized if you feel that your body is capable of doing alot more things physically.
Incorporating stretching into your day to day life has its benefits and you can’t dispute that. It doesn’t require much effort and after you’ve done it for a while it becomes routine. Your fitness is important, so do what you need to to keep your body healthy.
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