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The Benefits of Stretching
Mandy
http://www.virtualfitnesstrainer.com

"I never stretch, I don't have enough time and I can't be
bothered lying around all over the floor stretching when I
am in a hurry to get home from the gym?" Sound familiar?! I
hear it often! And even though it sounds funny when you
hear it out aloud, it is often the case for many people
when training. I can't tell you enough how important
stretching is. As stupid as stretching may look it plays a
major part in assisting healthy training results and gains.

Stretches help prevent injuries while training PLUS
increase flexibility.

How? By making your muscles more flexible by lengthening
them. For example, when you perform a bicep curl you bend
your arm and raise your hand towards your shoulder. When
you watch this movement you will see the bicep muscle
shortening. When you extend your arm back to starting
position it would be lengthening your bicep muscle.

Often when muscles have been trained hard, or if they
haven't been trained in years (that is lack of exercise in
general) they tend to seize up, contract / shorten when you
do put them under strain such as moving house, playing an
occasional game of football at the park etc. So stretching
these muscles helps lengthen them to give your body and
limbs a better range of motion or movement.

When was the last time you either trained or did something
strenuous to the point where your muscles were sore for
days? Remember the sheer pain you went through? That's your
muscles contracting. So you need to stretch or lengthen
them to help repair them and increase flexibility.

About Increasing Your Flexibility

As you already know we are born with fantastic range of
movement when it comes to flexibility. Eg baby sucking it's
toes etc. So what happens? Most of us don't bother to keep
up with that type of range of movement as we get older,
which means we lose our flexibility. When you think about
it the average person doesn't exercise that much at all,
let alone going out of their way to train for flexibility.

Dancers and Gymnasts undergo large amounts of training and
stretching to increase and maintain flexibility, as do
athletes. You may have seen sports people at events or
games where they have performed a warm up (say a jog for
instance) around the oval. They warm their muscles up, then
stretch them. This offers them better flexibility while
they are playing and prepares their muscles for the game
ahead. They will then perform stretches after the game as
well.

About Stretching

There are many types of stretches from partner stretches to
sports specific stretches. What ever your activity, it is
important to make sure you take a small amount of time out,
while your muscles are still warm, to stretch. Try not to
stretch on cold muscles because you may damage them further
if they are already sore and injured. I could go on about
the benefits of stretching for pages, so instead of
rambling on, I have just given you a general explanation so
you gain a better understanding of why it is so important
to REMEMBER TO STRETCH!

Happy Training! Click here for more free articles
http://www.virtualfitnesstrainer.com

Yours in fun, health and fitness
Mandy http://www.virtualfitnesstrainer.com 


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