Stretching is a powerful tool that can truly enhance the way you feel, look, and act. Often times people forget to stretch or leave it out of their daily routine because they feel like they don’t have time for it. As a physical therapist, this bewilders me because stretching should never be overlooked--it can change your life for the better. I highly recommend stretching daily for at least 15 minutes. Pick what feels best for your body: in the morning, midday, in the evening, pre-workout, post-workout.
Join my virtual yoga for stretching classes and book a consultation with us to get started.
Let’s discuss 5 reasons why stretching can change your life.
1. Decrease Daily Stiffness
Feeling stiff isn’t just a symptom of old age, it can be prevented and healed through ritual stretching. Making stretching part of your daily routine highly increases your flexibility and ability to move freely. Static or non-moving stretches can be held for 5 deep breaths or 30 seconds. Dynamic or moving stretches coordinate breath with movement and I recommend 10 repetition of each stretch on each side of the body. Look at the video below to perform a dynamic stretching sequence.
Get stretching so you can feel free and comfortable when you move around your daily routine, play sports, or go on your next adventure!
2. Perform Better in Your Sport/ At the Gym
When exercising and playing sports, your muscles are repeatedly contracting and shortening. Stretching allows your muscles to lengthen and relax which maximizes your muscle engagement for you next workout. Additionally, stretching increases your blood flow which helps to supply nutrients throughout the body and assists in removing harmful waste from your body’s muscle tissues. This process accelerates muscle recovery time so you can demonstrate peak performance in the sports and workouts you love.
3. Release Tense Muscles from Holding Stress
When we feel stressed or anxious, it doesn’t just impact our mental health. We can often times feel it in our bodies too. This is because when we have stressful or anxiety inducing experiences in life, our bodies respond with muscle tension. Stretching can help relieve this painful feeling in our muscles, making us feel more relaxed and allowing our bodies to feel at ease. Deep stretch or Yin Yoga classes are great avenues to achieve relaxed deep stretching by holding stretches for 3-5 minutes at a time and slowly moving from one stretch to the next. Watch and follow a 15 minute Yin Yoga Sequence below.
4. Help You Sleep!
If you have trouble falling asleep at night, listen up! Stretching before going to bed at night has been scientifically proven to help you get a better night’s sleep. Why does stretching correlate to better night’s sleep? Well, there’s an array of reasons. For starters, getting in tune with your body by stretching allocates your focus and attention to your body and breath rather than other stressors that may be keeping you up at night. Additionally, stretching promotes mindfulness which is highly correlated with relaxation and therefore a better night’s sleep. The Yin Yoga stretching sequence above will help relax mind and body to ready yourself for sleep.
5. Improve Your Posture
Slouching, a common and increasing problem, can be easily reversed and prevented through ritual stretching. Stretching promotes proper alignment and allows for improved vertical posture. Good posture does not only look better, but it improves blood flow, promotes healthy nerve flow, and supports you muscles, tendons, and ligaments. Also, people with good posture have less neck and back pain!
