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Incorporating stretching into your daily routine may give you more benefits than you know. Health coach Mike Granato is here to share stretching advice to get you started.
Stretching keeps your muscles flexible, strong, and healthy. We need that flexibility to maintain a range of motion in the joints and without it, our muscles will shorten and become tight. This can be concerning when you call on the muscles for activity and they are weak and unable to extend to a full range of motion. Not having this range of motion and strength actually puts you at risk for joint pain, strains, and muscle damage.
Regular stretching keeps your muscles long, lean, and pliable. This means that exertion will not put too much force on your muscles when they are activated.
Stretching can also help you to lose weight. Yes, you read that correctly!
When you think about stretching as a form of exercise, effort is put forth during that activity. Exerting effort results in your body burning calories. Stretching will help you build and strengthen muscles in the long run. Remember, muscle tissue burns more calories when your body is at rest than other types of tissue. If you have more muscle you will burn more calories and potentially lose more weight throughout the day, every day. Even if you’re not active and your body is at rest.
The important areas for mobility are:
Make it a goal to stretch at least three or four times per week.
Stretching once or twice won't instantly give you perfect flexibility. You'll need to be consistent over time. It may have taken you months or years to get tight muscles, so you're not going to be perfectly limber after one or two sessions. It takes weeks to months to get flexible and you'll have to continue stretching regularly to maintain your flexibility.
Increasing research has shown that stretching the muscles before they're warmed up can actually hurt them. When a muscle is cold, the fibers aren't prepared for activity and may be damaged. If you exercise first you'll get blood flow to the muscle, and that makes the tissue more pliable and willing to respond to the stretch.
Instead, warm up your workout by doing movements that mimic that exercise you're about to perform, then stretch afterwards.
Sit on the ground and place the left shin on the ground, parallel to the pelvis. Stack the right shin on top, ankle above the knee and knee above the ankle. Maintain a neutral spine. For a more challenging position, hinge forward from the hips and place the hands on the ground as the torso folds forward.
From an all-fours position, place the inner shins on top of towels or a blanket that are several feet apart (or to your point of flexibility.) Turn the toes away from the body. Walk the hands and torso forward and position the forearms on the ground. Allow the upper body to relax in the pose to stimulate the stretch in the inner thighs.
Lie on your stomach, legs a comfortable distance from each other. Bring your palms flat on the floor and adjust the distance of your hands away from your body, according to the sensations in your lower back: bring the hands forward to reduce the sensations or widen the position of the arms to accommodate your shoulders.
Not sure how to get started on these stretching poses? Watch Mike Granato's stretching video to guide you through.
