7 days to a Better Body : Day 5

We’ve already discussed about stretching before but now we’re going to go in great details about it. I know many are looking for ways to improve their flexibility and to be able to perform splits or high range moves. All this can be accomplished with repetitive flexibility training after your workout sessions or your sport. The stretching you do before your exercises are generally to warm up your muscles and to get them ready for intensive stretching but they also improve your general flexibility.

STRETCHING: ALL COVERED

Once again, I’d recommand reading Tricks Tutorial Developing flexibility guide. If you have a lot of time on your hands, you could also read STRETCHING AND FLEXIBILITY: Everything you never wanted to know by Brad Appleton. Here’s I’ll be discussing about the important step of a good stretching session.

1. Stretching should not get you exausted. If you’re getting exausted, you’re putting too much strenght in it and it is not good because it will reduce your range of motion and will set your nervous system alert at this range, thus reducing your flexibility which isn’t what you’re looking for.
2. I’d suggest you do the morning routine they suggest on Tricks Tutorial as flexibility exercises are easier when you just woke up.
3. Like I’ve said many times, stretchings are to be perform at two different moment in your training session or your sport. At the beginning in the warm up session and at the end in the cooling down session. Each kind of stretching will provide specific advantages to your activities as the pre-session is used to prepare the muscles to perform and the post-session is used to make sure the muscle will recover faster from their hard work.

The WHYs of STRECHING

1. Static stretches help to speed up your recovery
2. Stretching reduce the possibilities of getting easily injured during and after your physical activities.
3. Stretching helps you recover from injuries faster
4. Dynamic stretching is a good warm up method as it involves movements, but don’t forget to do cardio also.

See you tomorrow for day 6.

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