The Importance of Stretching for Flexibility

When people consider their diet and exercise regimen and how they can improve it, they very rarely consider the benefits of simple stretching. Stretching can help you increase your balance, strength, and flexibility - all of which are important for maintaining fitness and avoiding injury. Stretching for flexibility is beneficial in all aspects of your active life.

Why You Shouldn't Overlook Stretching
Stretching has so many benefits. At all levels, there are stretches that can be done to help increase your flexibility and strength, and even your balance. This can help you avoid injuries, feel limber, and give you more range of motion and energy.

How Stretching and Flexibility Helps Your Workouts
Stretching your muscles is a great way to prepare them for workouts of any kind, and is also a great way to cool down from a workout. Stretching before and after workouts helps work out lactic acid, prevents injury, and helps you feel less sore. Not to mention that the added flexibility will help you get the most out of your workouts. Hold each stretch for 30 seconds to 1 minute per side.

Great Stretches for Flexibility

(Photo courtesy of imagerymajestic at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.)

* Behind the Head Elbow Stretch - In either a sitting or standing position, simply reach one arm behind your head. Using the opposite arm, grab your elbow and press to increase the stretch. Hold the stretch and repeat on the opposite side.

* Lunge Stretches - Stand with your feet shoulder width apart and your hands on your hips. Step out wide with one foot, and then bend that knee, bringing the back leg down against the ground. Get as close to the ground as you can, trying to touch your shin to the ground. Hold this pose and then repeat on the opposite leg.

* Seated Twists - Sit on the ground with your feet out in front of you and then twist your torso to one side. Then bring your arms around to help pull your torso into a good twist. Hold this pose and then repeat on the opposite side. You can also do a second variation of this stretch with your legs folded “criss-cross”.

* Folding Stretch - Stand up straight with your feet just slightly apart. Keeping your posture straight, bend at the waist and try to hug your knees. If you are not quite at that level, just try to touch your toes or use blocks or the bottom stair to stretch as far as possible. Don't force it - just hold the pose and let your body stretch naturally.

* Butterflies - Sit on the floor with your legs out in front of you. Bring your legs in and touch the bottoms of your feet together, knees bent outward. Keeping your knees as flat on the ground as possible, grab your feet and try to bring them closer to your body. Without straining yourself, bounce your knees up and down a bit.

* Yoga Poses - There are a huge amount of yoga poses that are aimed specifically at increasing your flexibility. Two of these poses are called “baby cobra” and “downward facing dog”.

* Baby Cobra - Lie face down on the ground with your arms near your head, palms on the ground. Use your hands to push the top portion of your body off the ground, curving your spine backwards and looking up to the sky.

* Downward Facing Dog - Start in push-up position, and then push your hips up, folding your body in half so your bottom is up in the air and your head and arms are down. Your heels should be flat on the ground, stretching your entire body. If you can't get your heels flat on the ground with your knees straight, straighten your knees and let your heels lift up. Gradually work on getting your heels closer to the ground.

Stretching for flexibility will help you will all facets of your healthy lifestyle and exercise regimen. These stretches alone will be beneficial for your whole body and daily life, and when paired with your exercise routine will make a huge difference in your overall fitness and health.

Video: Flexibility & Range of Motion - Beginner Yoga Set

This short video gives you a great flexibility workout in under 10 minutes. It is suitable for beginners, but also a great way to stretch and increase your range of motion for any level of fitness, especially if you are not very flexible. Focus on breathing into the stretch to oxygenate your muscles and increase your joint flexibility gradually. She moves fairly quickly, but the moves are quite simple, so shouldn't be too challenging. Remember don't push yourself too far - flexibility is developed slowly - not all at once.

Do this short routine daily and watch your flexibility increase dramatically in just a few weeks! This is also a great way to warm up and stretch for a few minutes before a more strenuous workout.

Flexibility and Range of Motion | Beginner Yoga With Tara Stiles
Today I'm going to show you basic moves to get you started opening ...
 

Find More Flexibility Yoga Workouts Here:
  

4 Benefits of Flexibility Exercises

If you were to walk into a gym today and observe the daily routines of its patrons, you would likely notice a common theme:  people's desire to get their workouts done, and to carry on with their busy lives. 

As a result, many people have done away with making flexibility exercises a part of their workouts.  However, several benefits can be achieved by putting a focus back on flexibility exercises. 

1. Decreased chance of injury through reduced joint stress

Stretching (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

* The old adage is true – "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."  If you are about to put your body, and especially your joints, through a rigorous workout, it makes sense to take those joints through their full ranges of motion first. 

* A joint that is flexible will not only have a great range of motion, but it is also less likely to get injured than a cold or tight joint.  Having said this, most experts agree that stretching a joint should only be performed once the body and muscles have been warmed up.  As a result, it is now advisable to do a few minutes of light cardio activity to get the blood flowing before beginning a stretching program. (If your workout or flexibility program consists of some type of yoga, just ease into it by not stretching as far at the beginning - see #2 below.)

2. Increased range of motion

* It has been shown that for some weight lifting exercises, the fuller the range of motion is, the more beneficial the exercise can be to muscle building.  It would then be in your best interest to achieve that goal. 

* Increasing your range of motion is most easily performed by doing a dynamic stretch of the body part that you plan to target in your workout routine.  Dynamic stretching, as opposed to static stretching, involves putting a targeted body part's muscles and joints through a series of progressively wider ranges of motion until they are fully stretched - a yoga routine is a good example of this.

A gymnast stretching exercise. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

3. Increased balance

* Imagine if you dropped something on the floor, and you were about to pick it up.  But just before you do this, you are told you cannot bend your knees or bend at the hips.  Picking up that object now seems next to impossible without falling flat on your face! 

* This is an extreme example, which illustrates a simple concept.  Flexible joints allow a body to keep its balance.  A body is most balanced when the head, shoulders, and hips are in perfect alignment, and flexible joints allow for this alignment to happen whether you are working out or just going about your daily activities.

4. Improved posture and muscle relaxation

* Muscle tightness, due to lack of flexibility in one area of the body, can cause problems in other areas.  As an example, tight hamstrings often lead to increased tension and fatigue in the muscles of the lower back.  As a result, low back pain then leads to poor posture as your body tries to protect itself from the pain it is enduring - remember - everything in the body is connected and affects the other parts!  The best way to prevent some forms of low back pain is to ensure that leg and torso muscles are subjected to a variety of flexibility exercises. This is why relief for chronic pain can often be found through specific exercises.

To conclude, whether the stretches you incorporate into your daily routine are static or dynamic, are performed at home or at the gym, are probably not the most important factors.  The most important factor is that you do make flexibility exercises a part of your workout so that you can get the most out of your training - and achieve a healthier, stronger, and pain-free body.

Video - Stretching Exercises Before Running

These 8 stretches will help loosen up your muscles and joints before running or jogging. Stretching is important to help you avoid injury during your workout. This is a really quick video that just demonstrates the positions of each stretch - remember to hold each stretch for the full recommended length of time.

Now get your shoes on, get stretched, and go!

Stretching Exercises Before Running
www.WatchMojo.com shows you 8 important stretches that you should use before heading out on a run or jog.

10 Things You Should Know About Stretching

Before fitness training of any kind, it is very important to do warm-up or stretching exercises to prevent accidents or injury, and enhance the benefits you will gain from your exercise session.  There are also a number of precautionary measures and tips that may serve as guidelines when getting ready to work out.

Here are 10 helpful tips:

English: An elderly man performs stretching exercises in gym (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

1.  To increase your flexibility and to avoid injuries, stretch before and after a workout.  Almost everyone knows that stretching before workouts prevents injuries during the exercises, but stretching after a workout, when muscles are still warm, can also increase flexibility and reduce soreness.

2.  Hold your stretching position for at least 60 seconds to increase flexibility.  While holding your position for 20 seconds might be enough for warm ups, holding each position for at least 60 seconds will improve the body's flexibility a lot more. Also don't bounce while holding stretches (see next tip).

3.  Do not repeatedly go into a stretching position then immediately return to the relaxed position.  This is more appropriately termed as bouncing. When stretching, hold that position for several seconds (see #2 above), and then slowly relax.  You may do this exercise repeatedly this way.  Bouncing or forcing yourself into a position during stretching can strain or damage some joints or muscles.

4.  Work slowly in increments instead of immediately proceeding to doing the hardest exercise or position.

5.  Make sure that you have stretched or warmed up all muscle groups.  For some people, even if they have strong bodies, they tend to neglect the neck when working out of stretching.  Stretching the neck muscles can be as simple as placing the palm of one's hand against the front of the head and pushing it as far as it will comfortably go.  Then, do the same to the sides and the back of the head.

6.  Stretch regularly to continually increase your range of movements and your level of flexibility and strength.

7.  Work out considering only your capabilities and not of others.  Do not force yourself to do exercises that you are not yet capable of just because there are people who can do it.  Increase your limits slowly.  Listen to your body.  There are days when your body may be too tired and you may have to consider reducing your range of motion. This is fine, and it's better to take it easy for a day or two than to injure yourself.

8.  Learn to rest.  Rest in between sets and stations to make sure that the body has enough time to recover its energy.  Also, it is advisable that you don't work the same muscle groups consecutively for two days.  The muscles actually grow in strength during the period when you rest and not when you are working out.

9.  Do aerobic exercises in intervals to strengthen your heart.  Aerobic exercises are those physical activities that use oxygen for fuel.  This includes cardiovascular exercises such as skipping rope, running or swimming.

10.  Music may help you when you want to train for longer periods or to increase your intensity.  You can use mp3 players, CD players or lightweight am radio receivers for this.  Just make sure that you brought your headset with you if working out in public so you wouldn't disturb people who don't prefer music while exercising.

Apart from preventing injuries and increasing one's flexibility, many people also find that stretching feels good for a tired body and helps relax your mind as well.

Why Do Yoga?

As you can probably tell, we love yoga here!  There are many great benefits to yoga, it is something just about everyone can do at some level, and it's also a lot of fun! Yoga creates both flexibility and strength along with cardiovascular health. It creates mental clarity and focus and emotional balance. Yoga is safe for all ages and body types. It facilitates healing from injuries and is a wonderful way to create wellness.

Image via WikipediaYou weight train to gain strength, jog or do aerobics for a cardiovascular workout, practice tai-chi to develop a sense of balance and harmony, stretch to gain flexibility, and meditate to develop peace of mind and relaxation. Yoga is a form of exercise that gives you everything: strength, endurance, balance, flexibility, and relaxation. It is the only complete form of bodywork that does it all. Indeed, yoga is more than stretching and relaxation: it is the ultimate mind-body challenge.

Yoga increases flexibility as it offers positions that act upon the various joints of the body including those joints that aren’t always in the forefront of noticeability. These joints are rarely exercised, however, with yoga, they are!

Various yoga positions exercise the different tendons and ligaments of the body. The body that may have been quite rigid begins experiencing a remarkable flexibility in even those parts which have not been consciously worked upon. Seemingly unrelated non-strenuous yoga positions act upon certain parts of the body in an interrelated manner. When done together, they work in harmony to create a situation where flexibility is attained relatively easily.

Image via WikipediaYoga is perhaps the only form of activity which massages all the internal glands and organs of the body in a thorough manner, including those – such as the prostate - that hardly get externally stimulated during our entire lifetime. Yoga acts in a wholesome manner on the various body parts. This stimulation and massage of the organs in turn benefits us by keeping away disease and providing a forewarning at the first possible instance of a likely onset of disease or disorder.

By gently stretching muscles and joints as well as massaging the various organs, yoga ensures the optimum blood supply to various parts of the body. This helps in the flushing out of toxins from every nook and cranny as well as providing nourishment up to the last point. This leads to benefits such as delayed ageing, energy and a remarkable zest for life.

Check back later this week for some recommendations on how to get started with a yoga program, if you're a beginner. And if you're already a yoga fan, we'll have some ideas for you to take your workout to the next level, and gain even more benefit from your practice.

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Transurfing Yoga is a powerful combination of traditional yoga poses with resistance training. It utilizes dumbells of various weight (0.5kg-5kg) depending on your goals and fitness level.

ATTENTION GIRLS: You’re not going to bulk up (unless you want to) after doing yoga with dumbbells! It only works on strengthening your muscles to give you a lean sculpt look, and you can always vary the intensity of the workout.

This workout works your whole body - head-to-toe. (Flexibility, strength, balance and Core work … all at the same time!) As you will  need to give 100% of your concentration to the workout, this will help calm your mind and melt your stress away.

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Transurfing Yoga uses the principles described in the book called "Reality Transurfing" by Vadim Zeland, principles similar to the Secret and Law of Attraction, to help you get fit, lose weight, get a better health and look younger. Transurfing Yoga techniques are so powerful because they combine mental, psychological,  and physical attributes to attract your goals faster, whether it be a dream body, or a dream lifestyle.

Find out more about this fun and effective type of yoga here....