Stretching Exercises: Neglect Them At Your Own Peril

Flexibility is an oft-neglected part of physical fitness . A lack of flexibility can result in long-term discomfort, imbalances, and injury.

Many back problems can be blamed on hips and hamstrings that lack flexibility.

Starting your training session without a proper warm up, which includes active stretching, is one of quickest ways to end that session early, due to injury from stiff, uncompromising muscles and joints.

I remember my brother-who's in his 30's by the way-challenging his son and some of the neighborhood kids to a foot-race. His son is was around 9 years old at the time. Being the voice of reason I told him "You might want to think about warming up." I was quickly silenced by a "they`re nine years old, c'mon!"

...1,2,3 Go!

He started out great, hell, he left those kids in the dust. But it ended as I thought it would--with him pulling his hamstring, falling to the ground and rolling to a stop. I can still hear the kids laughing and his wife yelling, "You're still going to work tomorrow!".

Kids, before you embark on something stupid, prepare your body for it first.

Benefits of stretching:

• Helps prepare muscles for training (Dynamic stretching)

• Helps muscles relax after training (Static stretching)

• Improves range of motion

• Can help tendonitis

• Helps to increase circulation

• Helps to reduce the risk of injury during training

Many people confuse the warm-up with stretching, people seem to think that they're the same thing. Remember--your warm-up is used to get you ready for your stretching before you start training.

You have to bring the temperature of your body and your muscles up, then start your stretching routine, then start your training program.

Not only will a proper warm-up that focuses on flexibility and range of motion help prevent injury and muscle cramps , it can also help your performance during your session by preparing your muscles, joints, and connective tissue for the task at hand. It will also elevate your core temperature, increase blood flow and loosen tight muscles.

It's important to prepare your body before you train and the same care should be taken after your session. Stretching exercises performed after your session can help to speed up recovery, reduce post-training soreness and increase your range of motion .

Now the kind of preparation that you do before training and after training differ slightly.

Training preparation and recovery should include:

Pre training prep

• Warm up- Basically anything that will raise your core temperature. Skipping rope, jogging etc for about 3 minutes will do it.

• Stretching (dynamic)- Making it dynamic refers to motion used. Dynamic stretching lengthens the muscle and then shortens it, rather than holding a lengthened muscle for say, 30 seconds. The dynamic motion should used before you begin to train.

• Duration- Usually 10-15 minutes.

• Cool Down- If your session was high intensity you’ll want to cool down. Active recovery like light aerobic work, jogging or a fast walk, for example, has been shown to aid recovery faster than just stopping activity all together.

Depending on how intense the session was and what your heart rate (HR) is--for example, if you HR was around 160 beats per minute and higher--you’ll want to cool down until you HR is bellow 100 beats per minute. Then begin your stretching.

A proper cool down will also help prevent blood from pooling in the muscles that were stressed.

• Stretching exercises(static)- These are performed slowly and held for 20-30 seconds.

These are some examples of stretching exercises out of dozens that shouldn't be neglected and can only help in your training.

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