Stretching

What is stretching ?

Stretching exercises will help you become more flexible, you recover faster after exercise and to prevent injury. They will make you a complete fitness program.

Benefits of stretching
- The muscles become more elastic and develop better.
- Prevents injuries and contusions when executed properly.
- Faster muscle recovery after exercise.
- Reduces stress on joints and muscles.
- Increases muscle growth and helps them.
- Increases flexibility, balance and coordination.
- Helps eliminate toxins and waste substances from the muscle.

Flexibility is an individual quality, which depends on several factors:

- Age - compared to adults, young people are more flexible.
- Gender - women are more flexible than men.
- Fitness level - people who actively exercise are more flexible than people who do not train.
- Temperature - when muscles are warmed are more flexible.

You can check their flexibility as you try from an upright position to touch the floor with your fingers. If you fail do not worry if you include stretching in your workout a few weeks to fix things.

TYPES OF STRETCHING 

- Passive - the safest type of stretching in which no hurry perform the exercise, hold 20 seconds and with smooth movements return to the starting position.
 
- Active - stretching is performed without detention, rhythmically shorten and stretchto a maximum.
 
- Ballistic - like passive, but springing that requires attention because of the possibility of excessive strain and injuries.

Tips for safe stretching

 - Always warm-up before stretching, so as not to hurt yourself.
- Do not hold your breath while stretching. Breathe in through your nose and exhale through your mouth.
- Do not rush. Best performances stretching will be more effective.
- Do not compare yourself with others. Everyone has a different level of flexibility.The comparison may result in injuries.
- If you feel pain while doing stretching, stop. Everything must be within tolerable.
- Avoid ballistic stretching, because it does not control the stretch and possibly hurt yourself.

How often do stretching ?
 
The more often you do stretching, the faster you will become flexible. The minimumis to do stretching after every workout, which means 3-4 times a week.
 
Stretching exercises take 10-15 minutes. Hold each stretch 20 seconds, repeat 1 or 2 times.

Stretch slowly until you feel a slight tension in the muscles, but not pain. If you feel the pain you've stretched too much.
 
There are two ways of doing stretching exercises. One is to stretch after each series of exercises, the other - after all the training. The key is to have warmed up your muscles to stretch.

Technique of stretching
Forget springy movements, they have a greater likelihood of trauma. Prefer slowly and gently stretch until you feel mild tension. Breathe calmly and in rhythm. Hold the stretch for about 20 seconds, then gently return to the starting position.

As we mentioned earlier, the best time to stretch is after your muscles are warmed up to stretch. After exercise or between sets of exercise. If you do stretching before workout should include only light exercise, otherwise you can hurt yourself uncomfortable.

In conclusion, we recommend that you not neglect stretching exercises and make them part of your fitness program.