Stretching
Stretching your muscles is a part of a healthy lifestyle at any age. There are many positive benefits of stretching:
Stretching:
helps move joints through a full range of motion, by keeping ligaments (attach muscle to muscle) and tendons (attach muscle to bone) flexible
prevents injury
improves athletic performance
encourages a healthful lifestyle
helps ease sore or tight muscles
promotes better posture
avoids stiffness and speeds recovery of muscles after running or playing sports
encourages blood to circulate to the muscles and joints throughout the body
reduces stress.
Toe Touch
A toe touch stretch is one of the most basic stretches. This stretch targets largely the muscles of the legs, especially the calves and hamstrings. From a standing position, bend over at the waist and reach for your toes with feet together. If you can’t quite reach your toes, stretch just as far as is comfortable. From a sitting position: sit with legs outstretched and together. Then bend forward; reaching for the toes or as far as is comfortable. In both stretches, you should hold the stretch for 20 seconds and then release.
Neck Half Circles
Start by stretching right ear to right shoulder. Then roll your head around, chin to chest, in a half circle to the left shoulder, and then back again, chin to chest. Slow movements are important to protect the neck muscles from injury.
Shoulder Circles
Shrug your shoulders and rotate them forward and down in a circle. Switch directions after five or six turns by shrugging the shoulders and then moving backwards in a circle.
Arm Circles
Arm circles can be used to stretch the muscles supporting the elbow and shoulder joint where the arm attaches to the shoulder. Hold your arms out to the side. Then draws circles with your hands, starting with small circles and slowly growing to large circles, then back to smaller circles. Start first by drawing circles clockwise, and then reverse to counter-clockwise. Keep the movements slow.
Side Bends
Stand up straight with arms to the outside of each thigh. Slowly move the fingers down toward the outside of one knee, while bending at the waist. Alternate sides, do 10 side bends on each side.
Reach for the Stars
Just like the title of this one, reach up as high as you can while standing on your tiptoes. This stretch can even be done while lying down on a mat; the goal is to reach their hands and feet away from each other.
Child’s Pose
The child’s pose is a stretch taken from yoga, but can also be used outside of yoga as part of your stretching routine for more of a full body stretch. To perform the child’s pose, get on your knees with feet together. Then sit on your heels and bend your body forward until the forehead touches the ground. Bring the arms around to each side of the body, resting with his or her palms facing towards the sky. Hold the pose for 30 seconds, and then return back to an upright kneeling position.