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Stretching – That important part of an exercise program that everyone knows should, but not everyone takes the time to do it. Many people get the idea that they should stretch, but don’t necessarily know how to stretch or what to do. Or worse, they have been taught unhealthy stretching techniques that can be more dangerous than not stretching at all.
Most people were taught at a young age that stretching before physical activity reduced the risk of injury does not affect a person’s risk of injury. For many people, stretching now seemed pointless. The problem with this is that they only reported one type of stretching: static stretching.
1# Static Stretching
Static stretching involves holding a certain position for a period of time to allow muscles to relax, and it can be beneficial at the end of a workout to bring our muscles back to normal length. You can prevent it as that can lead to posture problems and muscle imbalances (think of the big guys at the gym who can’t lower their arms to the side).
Muscles need to contract to allow movement, but they also need to learn to lengthen them. And static stretching isn’t the only type of stretching. Over the past decade, the fitness industry has developed many different methods for maintaining your flexibility and gaining greater mobility, and they can have more benefits than you might think.
Flexibility training can have a positive effect on:
- Posture
- muscle building
- mental constitution
- stress
- blood and lymph circulation
- balance
- metabolism
- mechanics with functional movements
- risk of injury
2# Dynamic Stretching
Dynamic stretching, as opposed to static stretching, whose function is to relax your muscles, this type of stretching activates your muscles and connective tissues in the same way that you perform them in your workout and the core together, mimicking many of the same movements we do in cardiovascular and resistance training.
If you do these movements quickly, blood flow, muscle length, brain-body connection and muscle memory will improve. The similarity between dynamic stretching and exercise movements helps reduce injury as the body and brain are prepared to work together to create the right movement. Dynamic stretching has also been found to improve speed and strength in exercises such as squats, lifting, running, and jumping when done before a workout.
Some examples of dynamic stretching include:
- walking lunges
- walking high kicks
- walking with squats
- jumping jacks
- weightless squats
3# Yoga
Yoga is growing in popularity among many different populations, and for a good reason: Every yoga posture involves a certain level of strength, flexibility and balance. A good yoga class involves a variety of different postures and stretches that give you a complete sense of mobility. There are many different types of yoga classes, some just focus on long stretches and others with faster exercises.
Staggered movements that help you gain stability over a wide range of motion as you move from one pose to another. Yoga classes also focus on combining breathing and movement, which can help relax and allow our muscles to stretch and stabilize more easily through our abs and keep moving in postures with a strong core. Many of the signal’s present in yoga classes use a phenomenon called reciprocal inhibition, which involves contracting one muscle so another can relax, to aid muscle mobility and enhancement of the whole enhancing body flexibility.
The ability to maintain a standing or balancing yoga posture helps improve stability in other types of weight-bearing exercises, improves our inner sense of our own posture, and improves our ability to maintain proper posture during exercise and daily activities to be observed.
4# Myofascial Release
Myofascial release is a broad term for the use of various tools to improve the mobility of our muscles. Foam rollers and a variety of trigger point release tools are very popular these days to put direct pressure on tight areas of the muscle as it helps loosen adhesions, muscle tissue and improves blood flow, which makes muscles more flexible and easier to stretch during static stretching and all other movements. And since our muscles are all connected by an internal network of connective tissue called fascia, your body will improve your range of motion in other areas of your body as well.
5# Eccentric Activation (Muscle Lengthening)
This is a relatively new way of improving our mobility and flexibility, but the principle behind it isn’t new. When we add stretch to the end of a range of motion, it creates a neurological response for that muscle. Contract more, which will help us stabilize and have more control over larger areas of motion. With this type of muscle activation, you not only increase your strength, but you can also move further, which increases your ability to perform physical exercises such as any activity in daily life that involves bending, reaching, reaching, lifting, rotating, pushing, drag and the list goes on.
A great way to achieve this is by using the motion bar. In 2014, the University of Michigan found out, when comparing using the motion bar with standard dumbbells and medicine balls, participants demonstrated 170% more core muscle activation and stabilizing muscles of the body when using the bar compared to other tools. When you do exercises that involve tilting, tilting, or swinging the bar, the dynamic rolling resistance within the bar shifts to an extreme, giving you the final stretch that signals your muscles to contract and stabilize within your exercise program, it also increases calorie consumption and metabolism and increases the efficiency of your training because your whole body works together at the same time.
Bottom Line
Sit back and fight to go in a direction your body doesn’t want to go. You can use these movement and flexibility training techniques to improve your performance during exercise, prevent pain and tension afterwards, and improve your physical and mental health. General. The next time you stretch, think about all the wonderful things you do for your mind and body and that contribute to your general wellbeing! Definitely worth spending some time on.
