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.

Fitness protect from depression

30-minute workout can significantly improve the emotional state, a study by the American Association for Mental Health. 

Regular physical activity increases self-confidence and reduces stress, say researchers. It can be used as prevention and treatment of depression and anxiety. People who exercise regularly develop depression and dementia by 30% less than in their inactive peers.

Researchers express recommendation workouts to be used as a "regulator" of mood, but warn that zeal may have the opposite effect, leading to negative attitudes - irritability and concentration in themselves. It is important to be selected pleasant and balanced workout, corresponding to physical abilities.

Researchers pay attention to the fact that the majority of the population do not exercise enough - only 40% of men and 28% of women obtain their recommended average of 30 minutes of physical activity a day.

3 things that adversely affect memory

1. HERPES
People with this virus or similar chronic infection tend to 26% more to give lower scores in tests of memory, compared with people who do not have such infections.

Long-term infection burden the immune system and injure blood vessels leading to the brain. The result is reduced mental capacity. It is still not clear how to deal with these effects once and for all, but with mental exercises and antiviral medications can reduce the damage.

2. Low levels of Vitamin B12

According to researchers at Rush University, the lack of this vitamin allows dangerous to introduce amino acids in large amounts into the bloodstream, where it struck down the arteries, thus reducing blood flow to the brain. This is easy to fix by taking eggs, beef, milk and seafood, as these foods are good sources of B12. If you are taking a multivitamin is also an option, as most of them contain more than 3.2 micrograms, which is the recommended amount per day.

3. Stress

Many of us happens to us we can not remember all the tasks that we have for the day. But a serious life of constant stress can cause long-term memory problems. Czech study showed that jobs that run under great stress increase the risk of dementia by 35%. Inflammation, which increases in response to stress hormones accelerate aging of the brain.