Injuries associated with exercise can really upset a well established routine, just when you think you’ve finally motivated yourself to stay with it – something of significance gives out in the middle of your workout. Sidelined for the time being, it becomes easy to lose that motivation when you are required to rest during recovery. Once the clear bill of health comes, it can be very difficult to return to the same pace prior to the unfortunate injury.
While most people recognize stretching is an aspect of any training/weight loss program, few people put any emphasis on it. It is critical for the human body to stretch. During activities, the muscles of the body are undergoing intense stresses. This stress can cause the muscle to remain tense and lose elasticity, which means it is in a prime state for an injury to occur.
By stretching, you test the limits of your range of motion. The immediate benefit of this is to keep the body loose and limber, tense muscles won’t give way to stress as limber muscles will. The long term benefit results in increased flexibility and shorter recovery times due to increased blood flow.
The amount of time one should stretch is really dependent on the person. If you find yourself getting delayed onset muscle soreness, you may want to increase the time you hold a stretch in addition to increasing the total time spent stretching.
The one aspect that is not dependent on a particular person, is how often to stretch. Ideally one should at least set aside time to stretch before exercise, and immediately after. By stretching immediately after exercise, one can take advantage of an elevated heart rate – which will improve the significance of stretching. Stretching for at least 10 minutes after waking for the day can have an effect similar to coffee, the blood will flow as the muscles extend. This effectively will get the sluggish feeling out of the body. For an enhanced effect, exercise immediately after stretching. The immediate exercise will further magnify the benefits of stretching immediately after waking up.
Wido Diethelm – http://weight-loss.exclusively-expert.com/