Remember when we were in elementary (grade or primary) school and we had to do PE (physical education)? The coach, before we would play games, would run us through a range of stretching exercises.
As a kid, I never understood why. I never felt any different whether I stretched or not. Why would I? I was a kid and my body was brand new.
As I got older, into my 20s, and I began to feel some of the pains of muscle strain, I started to “get it”.
Then when I entered my 30s, if I did not stretch before hard work or strenuous exercise, I could potentially get injured.
And then in my 40s, stretching became mandatory for full range of movement and for flexibility.
Listen guys, whether you think so or not, stretching is a needed component of every day life. It is one of those things that you will not see the benefit of it on the first day.
And, if you do stretch everyday, you will become accustomed to how you feel (which is better in most cases) and you may even think it is not working. That is until you stop stretching, your muscles tighten up, you cannot have your full range of motion and you injure your muscles while working, playing or even moving too quickly.
I do a daily stretching routine. It takes me about 15 minutes and it works wonders for me. I am able to minimize injury while maintaining a fuller range of motion. When I wake in the morning, sometimes my muscles are stiff. But after stretching, it melts away.
There are literally hundreds of different types of stretches, from yoga to sports type stretching. We have a whole module dedicated to it in our EVOLUTION program (https://mfa40.com/evolution/).
Regardless of what type you do, in our opinion, doing some form of stretching after you are 40 is better than none at all. We would start with easy to do and simple to understand ones.
It is also easy to over-stretch a muscle, which can cause injury. We just go until the muscle has some light tension on it and hold for at least 15 seconds and up to 30 seconds.
We will do posts about specific stretches in the future. If you have a specific muscle or muscle group that is tight and want to learn an effective stretch for it, leave a comment below and we will be happy to give you one.
Remember…stretch now and stretch often or you will hobble later and hobble often.
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