Stretching exercises they are believed to be a “must have” in any fitness program. However, these are often neglected and not given much time and attention. Little do we know that such simple exercises have great importance for us and our health! It’s true, and I’m about to prove it to you.
Doing stretching exercises before your actual workout warms up your whole body and keeps you away from accidents and injuries. They improve the flexibility of your joints and muscles, allowing you to go through your workout smoothly. As you stretch, your physique becomes much more agile, allowing you to make a wider range of motion.
After a workout, stretching exercises relieve tight muscles and allow the body to cool down. Do you know that after a workout, your body will be able to stretch even further than it did before your actual training program? This will actually make your body feel less tortured because it’s been moved and pushed in ways it’s not used to. However, keep in mind that you should not do subsequent stretching exercises if you strained or sprained a muscle while exercising, as this can worsen the injury.
Stretching exercises strengthen and increase muscle mass. This is because blood circulation throughout the body increases with muscle stretching. When your muscles get a workout, part of your brain gets a muscle tension message from them. Therefore, it relays this message to another area of the brain that is responsible for allowing us to go through physical responses to such messages. From there, you will feel your muscles tense up.
These are some of the stretching exercises that can also relieve body and muscle stress. Be sure to perform them correctly to get the results you want.
hurdler stretches
neck rolls
forward bends
Quadriceps stretches
spinal twists
abdominal stretches
In Craig Ballantyne’s Turbulence Training, he highly recommends static stretching exercises for specific body parts, as he believes this will help transform us into the bodies of our dreams.
psoas stretch
Hamstring stretch
gluteal stretch
stretch quadriceps
chest stretch
shoulder stretch