subject: Benefits Of Stretching Your Muscles [print this page] Before exercising, you ought to carry out stretching exercises to minimize the likelihood of injuring your muscles. Stretching your muscles helps to increase your body's flexibility. Preventing stress, preventing injuries and helping your muscles become accustomed to a variety of movements are some of the benefits of regular stretching.
Stretching exercises, when done properly, include breathing normally, stretching smoothly, and never feeling any pain. If stretching your muscles causes pain, then you are either doing the exercise wrong or have some kind of pre-existing injury. This next section describes the positive effects that regular stretching and flexibility exercises will have on your body's different muscle groups.
Back: Flexible back muscles are one of the primary factors in remaining supple and mobile, since they provide the required support to keep us upright. Stretching the muscles in your back and others near it helps to prevent back pain, both in the lower and upper back.
Legs: You ought to always stretch your legs in order to avoid difficulties such as leg cramps or pulling a muscle. This is essential for runners, joggers and walkers. It's also useful for those who frequently suffer from leg cramps or joint pain in the ankles or knees. To enhance your suppleness and mobility try leg stretches.
Abdominals: Remember to include your abs in your daily muscle stretching. Performing stretching workouts for the abdominal muscles gives you better posture, agility and balance, and keeps back pain to a minimum. The muscles in this group assist to keep us erect and mobile.
Arms: Stretching your arm muscles is commonly forgotten by many; however, for activities with repetitive arm movements like weightlifting or tennis, this simple step is essential. Stretches for the arm muscles are actually quite easy, although the degree of difficulty will depend on the range of motion and suppleness that an individual has. Do not forget to stretch your shoulder muscles as well when stretching this group of muscles.
Stretching your muscles is a critical aspect of a workout regimen. Stretches help prevent workout-related injuries. Since the results of flexibility exercises aren't as visible as those from other workouts, you may be tempted to skip them, but it's important that you don't give in to this temptation.
