Have you ever struggled to stand upright after spending hours bent over your desk?
Have you ever trained in a sport without managing to achieve results up to the level of your preparation?
Have you ever felt immediately tired and stiff even after a long rest?
If you answered yes to these questions, the cause might be poor muscle flexibility, which prevents your body from regaining the right posture, prevents your agonist muscles from fully expressing, and prevents you from freeing yourself from stress with a simple long night of sleep.
But never fear: to recover your natural agility and wellness in every situation, the solution is within your reach. It's called stretching.
Why do it
You know it will be good for you, and that it's useful to include in sporting activity, but you may not know what other advantages it can deliver in your daily life.
With a few minutes a day, some comfortable clothing, and a few square meters, a little stretching every day helps you:
- Improve your posture
When you maintain improper positions for long periods, the contracted muscles begin to shorten. Once you return to the natural position, the shortened muscles resist and prevent the bone segments from realigning normally.
By making the muscles in the back, pelvis, and legs more flexible, you'll regain good posture more easily and maintain it without effort. - Improve sporting performance
Overly stiff antagonist muscles hinder the agonist muscles. If you're an athlete, try to lengthen the muscle groups opposing those used in your athletic movements: this will free up the work of the agonist muscles, which, no longer held back, will contract more efficiently in every movement and will also help you save a lot of energy. - Reduce the risk of injury
If you perform very dynamic gestures without good flexibility, you subject your antagonist muscles to excessive stress, and in some cases this can result in muscular injury or sprains. A bit of stretching every day will protect you from the consequences of the "daredevil moves" of everyday life. - Eliminate stress
With stretching you decrease both the tension in your muscles and your heart rate: in a word, you relax. The important thing is to assume comfortable postures in which you can breathe naturally. It's precisely good oxygenation that will reset the balance of physiological functions and muscle tone, and thereby ease all states of stress in your body.
When to do it
You can stretch whenever you like. If you train, you can do it as a warm-up and cool-down.
In the first case, you're preparing your muscle to pass from the rest position to activity thanks to the thermal-metabolic effect of stretching.
In the second, stretching will allow you get back to your initial flexible state, because it will reduce muscle tone.
And even if you've decided to give yourself a break from training for Christmas, you definitely don't need to turn your back on wellness.
With a few stretching exercises every day, you'll stay nimble and agile, even during your vacation, maintaining for longer the beneficial effects of your relaxing Christmas holiday.
