Along with cardiovascular health and physical strength, flexibility is an equally important component of overall physical fitness. Yoga, pilates and basic stretching are great tools to improve flexibility, but keep these 5 rules in mind to maximize your efforts.
1. Turn Up the Heat!
It’s always a good idea to stretch before and after a workout, but never when your muscles are cold. When doing pre-workout stretching, do some jumping jacks or jump rope first to warm up the body. Cold stretching is a quick and easy way to accidentally tear your muscles.
Imagine your muscles are like a rubber band. If you put that rubber band in the refrigerator for 20 minutes and try to stretch it after taking it out, it’ll snap. The same idea applies to your muscles. Post-workout stretching can really work to your advantage when trying to improve flexibility. When the body is warm, it is able to stretch further than when it’s cold. In fact, one of the reasons yoga instructors turn up the temperature in studios during class is to make sure the muscles are warm enough to stretch without snapping.
2. Practice Makes Perfect
We’ve all heard the saying ‘practice makes perfect’ and the same is true for stretching. The more you stretch, the better you’ll become at it. Simple!
3. Don’t Push It
One of the quickest ways to undo all your hard work on your flexibility is to over exert yourself when stretching. If you’ve reached a point in your stretching that your limbs are shaking or your muscles hurt, STOP AND RETREAT! Your body is very smart and it’s got subtle ways of letting you know when you’re about to do damage. Pain and the shakes are warning signs that you’re about to damage something.
4. Breathe and Hydrate
Do you remember the V-sit-and-reach exercise from the Presidential Physical Fitness Tests from elementary school? If your gym teacher was anything like mine, he’d yell “BREATHE” until he was red in the face when performing this exercise because breathing helped you stretch further. Oxygen intake is critically important to the development of cells. Every cell in the human body requires oxygen to perform, so deep breathing can really help to improve flexibility. So the next time you’re in the gym stretching, breathe in deeply and see how much deeper into your stretch you’ll get (but remember #3 and don’t push it if it starts to hurt).
Water intake is also critically important to the development of cells. Like oxygen, every cell in the human body requires water to perform, so the amount of water you intake can either make or break you, literally. Water helps loosen and lubricate the muscles and joints, which is one reason why staying hydrated during your workout is so important. Also, if your body doesn’t get enough water, it’ll hoard the water already in your body which may lead to dehydration and muscle tears.
5. Eat Healthy
Food intake is so important to all elements of physical fitness, including stretching. Have you ever noticed how difficult it is for overweight people to stretch? That’s because they’ve got a spare tire stopping their progress! Foods high in caffeine, sugars, sodium, and fat literally get in your way when trying to improve flexibility. Nutritionally poor foods can cause inflammation in the joints and tissue, making it more difficult to stretch your muscles. Green vegetables like spinach, asparagus, lettuce, peas, kale, and celery; berries, and nuts all help reduce inflammation in the body and improve blood flow, making it easier to get deep into a stretch.
