Saturday, November 29, 2008

Static Stretching And Why You Need To Stretch

By Gina Gardi

Most people have muscular imbalances because of repetitive daily movement patterns. An imbalance occurs when another muscle takes over the job of a primary muscle. This places undue stress on the body causing muscles to become tight and week, and causes stiffness and poor movement of joints. The best way to correct this is through static stretching.

No matter what your fitness lever or your age, you can benefit from static stretching. Stretching will improve neuromuscular efficiency, improve joint range of motion, and improve the overall function of muscles. This helps to prevent injury and relieve pain.

You can perform static stretching before and after workouts. Before a workout stretching will help prepare your muscles for exercise and prevent injury. After exercise it helps to recover your muscles, increases flexibility which improves joint range of motion, and it also helps to reduce muscle soreness.

Static stretching is even more crucial if you are not active or you lead a sedentary lifestyle. It's important to remember to hold stretches for at least 30 seconds and only to a point where you feel slight tension.

The most common types of flexibility training include static stretching, active stretching, SRM with a foam roll, and dynamic stretching. The best place to start is with static stretches. Static stretching requires you hold a stretch for a period of 30 seconds at the first point of resistance. This allows your muscles to lengthen, improving flexibility. It's a great way to correct muscle imbalances.

Self myofacial release is also a form of corrective stretching. By applying pressure to "knots" or sensitive areas of a muscle, this technique allows bundled muscle fibers to be straightened and inline with the direction of the muscle, This in turn leads to lengthening of the muscles. It's a great way to restore your body to it's optimal level of functioning. This can be done by rolling specific muscles on a foam roll. SMR and static stretching can be combined in your warm-ups.

Two other forms of flexibility training include Active and Dynamic stretching. These types of stretches should be performed as a warm up and should only be performed if you have no muscle imbalances. Perform static stretching after your workouts to cool down.

Improving your flexibility and performing some static stretching exercises will not only feel great but will improve your posture, reduce your risk of injury, relieve pain, counteract aging, improve muscle recovery after workouts and reduce stress. - 16955

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