Flexibility

When to Stretch

Don’t worry about stretching before you begin, stretching muscles before you’re body warmed up is likely to do more harm than good. Instead take 5-10 minutes to warm up gently, a light walk, jog or cycle will get the blood to the muscle and make them more pliable for stretching.

When you’ve finished your session is a great time to stretch. You’re muscles will be nicely warmed up so less chance of damaging them. A gentle stretch session after exercise will help to prevent injuries and is a great way to wind down.

Adding a short stretch session on to the end of your exercise programme is a great way to start and hopefully you’ll begin too notice improvements within a couple of weeks. Try to include a longer flexibility session each week. You’ll find the results even more noticeable if you do this. Noticeable changes won’t take long with a regular stretching programme but be aware that as quickly as you can gain the results, you can loose it too so it’s important to keep it regular.

Test your flexibility

Being able to bend at the waist from a standing position and touch your toes without bending your knees is a sign of good flexibility. If you can’t quite manage this, make a note of how far off you are and use it as a bench mark to measure your flexibility progress. If you can’t manage what is suggested, make a note of how close you can get and keep practising until you get there.

Know Your Body

Some people will be more flexible than others in the upper body where as others will have better flexibility in their legs, it’s a very individual thing. After a couple of sessions you will begin to realise that some of the stretches are fairly easy to accomplish and others are not very easy at all. Most people will find some stretches easier than others, this is an indication of good range of motion around joints which is what we’re trying to achieve. Good range of motion can occur naturally or because of past activities which may have enhanced the range of motion. On the flip side, we’ll all have areas which are fairly stiff, many people suffer from tension in the shoulders, chest, hamstrings and hips, and it is important to pay particular attention to such areas when you’re stretching. Remember it is individual so establish which areas of your body have the most tension and pay particular attention to those but don’t completely neglect the other areas.

Do:

• Warm up first
• Start each stretch gently
• Exhale more as you go deeper into the stretch
• Hold each stretch for 10-30 seconds
• Ease up if the stretch hurts
• Concentrate on relaxing the area being stretched
• keep relaxed by listening to music or focusing on your breathing

Don't:

• Use a bouncing or jerking motion
• Hold your breath
• Stretch a cold muscle
• Strain into the stretch
• Push until you feel pain