Flexibility

Transcript: Flexibility

Today we are going to discuss flexibility. Before we start it’s very important to warm up for a few minutes. You want to stretch warm muscles, not cold ones. So marching or jogging in place for about 5 minutes or even a walk around the block with a loved one should do the trick. It’s all about preventing injury.

Ok, now we are ready to stretch. If you want to see the full battery of stretches just go to our website: www.exerciseismedicine.org.

I’m going to show you the first one that I think you should start with. I like to start out with the low back first. You’re going to lay flat on your back, keep your head up. You’re going to pull both knees to your chest so grab the very tops of your knees like so, head up, pull as far up as you can and then right as it gets uncomfortable take a nice deep breathe. Relax, and you’ll be surprised how much breathing takes a part in your stretching form.

Now for your hamstrings one hand on either side of your leg, your chin and your chest up with great posture, deep breathe and again push that air out and you’ll feel that muscle stretch, it feels really good.

Your quadricep muscles are some of the biggest muscles in your body so it’s very important to keep them flexible. Now the first you want to do is realize if you don’t have the balance that you used to you can always grab onto a wall or a chair for balance, so I’ll demonstrate. Now what you want to do is you want to grab the instep of your foot, the top of your foot and slowly pull that foot back. You want to bring that heel toward your low back, nice and slow, nice and smooth and again keep that chest up, chin up. Posture is very important. Hold each stretch for 10-30 seconds.

Alright, on to the upper body. This is a real simple move that you can do to stretch your shoulder, it’s called the deltoid muscle right here. Arm across your body just like that, bring the other arm right here the wrist right on the backside of that elbow and simply pull forward, and hold.

Alright now we are going to stretch what’s called the tricep muscle, the back of the arm. So what you want to do is push that straight in the air, just like so, come around the body and grab that wrist and what you do is you just want to pull down towards the backside of your shoulder and it will stretch that tricep muscle. It’s a really good stretch, you’ll be surprised at how effective it is.

Ok, let’s recap. These simple stretches, even if for only a couple of days a week can really help to improve your overall flexibility. However, we highly recommend that you try and stretch daily. Remember to warm up before you stretch and when stretching stretch in a slow smooth fashion with no bouncing or jerking. That way your muscles will be strong, flexible, and more importantly, free from injury.