Flexibility training can promote better breathing and may even help you beat stress
As we age, it is important to keep our joints supple to prevent stiffness, which can limit your mobility and hamper your ability to break falls.
Everyone is different, so some people may start to feel the true age of their joints after they turn 40 or 50, while others may still be fully mobile at eighty-five.
Staying active and stretching regularly help prevent this loss of mobility, which ensures independence as we age.
Flexibility plays an integral part in many athletic movements, but often, flexibility training is the most undervalued component of conditioning.
The only way to gain flexibility is by stretching. Although stretching has been long associated with dancers and gymnasts, all of us need some form of fitness flexibility.
Without adequate flexibility, daily activities such as getting out of bed, lifting a child, squatting to pick something up or even turning your head swiftly can become difficult. Over time, moving with ease and dexterity becomes a challenge.
In addition, inadequate flexibility from muscle tightness can affect your athletic performance by preventing you from reaching the full potential, strength and power of your muscles.
Men, especially, don’t seem to see the need to stretch, preferring instead to pound on the treadmill and toil on the weight machines.
Although stretching has been long associated with dancers and gymnasts, all of us need some form of fitness flexibility.
Many of my male students deem stretching as a “female” thing. If you have me as your instructor, there is no escape from my stretching clutch!
Flexibility is defined as the range of motion of your joints or the ability of your joints to move freely. It also refers to the mobility of your muscles, which allows for more movement around the joints.
Many factors determine and influence our flexibility. These include genes, bony and connective tissue structure, tight and loose ligaments, muscular fascial sheath, stress and muscular tension, injury, pregnancy and age.
Knowing the natural limitations of our anatomical structure allows us to stretch safely.
The notion that stretching before exercising can prevent injuries is still controversial. However, medical science is supporting the benefits of stretching as it relates to stress reduction. Kinesiologically, there is agreement that safe stretching improves movement function.
Increasing flexibility reduces muscle stiffness and tension. Holding less tension in the muscles makes the body feel more relaxed.
Incorporating visualisation and breathing techniques while stretching can promote relaxation and alter neurological responses to stress.
Regular stretching can also improve posture and enhance coordination.
If you suffer from painful joints due to conditions like arthritis, medical practitioners will often advise you to avoid stretching exercises like yoga, as they can actually inflame the situation even more.
This is not totally true. Exercises such as yoga and Pilates can help to keep your joints supple and have the added benefit of improving your balance.
I know of a chronic arthritis sufferer who depended on painkillers for more than 30 years. Fed up of being in pain, she decided to take up yoga at 70.
She started doing basic exercises – initially, on a chair because she couldn’t sit on the floor.
Daily, she’d fight the pain and dedicate two hours to her practice in the hope of improving her quality of life.
Two years later, not only was she off all medication and pain-free, she could do handstands and splits without any difficulty!
If you are a yoga practitioner, then you’d know that performing handstands without using wall support requires a tremendous amount of strength. A limber body at seven may not be the same as a limber body at 70.
She may not be able to twist her body into a pretzel, but still, what she has achieved is simply remarkable.
Here are some guidelines for flexibility training in the book Foundations of Professional Personal Training by the Canadian Fitness Professionals Inc.
• Don’t overdo it; work within your limits.
• Breathe comfortably. Exhale as the muscle lengthens to assist in relaxation.
• Perform flexibility exercises for each muscle group for total-body improvements.
• Work with warm muscles because they lengthen more easily and with less discomfort. The best time to do flexibility training is after the cardiorespiratory workout.
• Modify. You can alter the difficulty of a stretch by paying attention to single-joint versus multijoint movements (complexity), position of the stretch (whether it involves balance), available range of motion (individual limits), length of the lever (longer is more difficult), degree of exercise difficulty, chosen stretching technique and effect of gravity (as an assistance or resistance).
Because stretching is a time to slow down, take the moment to increase body awareness and reduce stress.
As the body becomes more supple, moving with a greater range of motion will make daily living and exercising easier and more enjoyable.
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