The Benefits Of Stretching For Daily Health

Is Stretching Important For Daily Health?

Stretching is often overlooked or avoided altogether, but it is a crucial part of enhancing daily movement and preventing injury. What’s more important is understanding what stretches can help and which ones can hurt.

Is There a Right or Wrong Way to Stretch?

As simple as stretching seems, there are important factors that keep you safe and healthy. Common mistakes with stretching include overstretching your muscles or stretching injured muscles. If you’re stretching and it’s difficult or hurts, this could mean you are overstretching or aggravating your muscles. The goal of stretching is to create flexibility in order to maintain a range of motion in the joints. With continued practice and consistency, you can work to improve your range of motion.

Can Stretching Improve My Health?

Depending on your definition of health, stretching can absolutely improve your daily life, including your health. Stretching eases stress, improves circulation and can reduce your risk of injury. For beginners new to exercise and stretching, our Doctors have a couple of tips to help you get started. 

Proper Warm Up

“Warming up ensures your tissues are prepared and ready to get the benefit of the demands of stretching,” says Dr. Jones of Performance Plus. Doing activities that get your heart rate elevated and your blood flowing is a great start before you start stretching.

Holding Stretches

Stretches should be held for 90 seconds to two minutes in order to get the full benefit and notice changes in muscle and tissue length. If your stretches are too short you run the risk of missing out on longer term benefits of stretching. 

What Are Common Problems Where Stretching Can Help?

Each year Americans become more sedentary with many jobs involving long periods of sitting. According to Forbes over 80 percent of jobs are sedentary in nature and impact the health of Americans. 

Fortunately, our Doctors have a couple stretches recommended to patients for common problems in today’s workforce. 

Seated Hip Flexor Stretch

Here is a popular stretch for those working at a desk most of the day. Frequent sitting could be causing you tight and achy hips. These seated stretches are a great way to help you feel loose throughout the day. 

Start seated and keep your back straight with both feet flat on the floor. Scoot to the front of your chair. Then, drop your right knee toward the ground, where you’ll be in a half-kneeling position, and rotate your trunk to the left. You’ll hold for 30 to 60 seconds, then switch sides.

Ankle Resistance Push

The ankle joints experience a lot of wear and tear and over time can affect your balance and increase your risk of a sprain. Strengthening your ankles can improve your stability, help with pain and work toward minimizing your risk for injury. 

For this stretch you’ll need a resistance band:

Sitting in a chair, raise your foot off the floor and slide your resistance bank under the ball of your foot, taking each end of the band in both hands. Give your ankle some resistance by pulling on the bands. Now, you’ll slowly flex your ankle down as far as you can. Then, slowly return your foot back to the starting position. You’ll repeat this 10 times on each foot.

Other Stretches You Can Start Doing Today

There are hundreds of stretches that you can do, but we’ll focus on a few simple stretches for the back, arms and legs to get you started:

Back

The knee-to-chest stretch is a simple stretch that you can do by lying on your back with your knees bent and your feet on the floor. In this stretch you’ll pull up one knee and hold it to your chest. Here you tighten the muscles in your back and press your spine to the floor. 

Arms

Here’s a stretch most are familiar with, the cross-body shoulder stretch. You’ll start standing or sitting up and you’ll grab one arm above your elbow with your opposite hand, and pull it across your body toward your chest feeling the stretch in your shoulder. 

Legs

The quad stretch is the muscle group in the front of your thigh. For this stretch you’ll stand with your side to the wall, holding the wall for balance if you need it. You’ll hold your outside foot with your outside hand and lift the foot toward your rear end, keeping your thighs and knees together. Here you should feel a gentle stretch in the front of the thigh.

Get Started Stretching

There are so many stretches and ways to improve your health or begin your journey on the way back from an injury. At Performance Plus we have numerous professionals to help you along in your journey and get you started off the right way. Looking to rehab an injury or find a new way to impact an aggravated muscle, find us and we’ll be more than happy to help you along the way. 

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