You may have just started to become more physically active, or, you may be the fittest person around – either way you you need to be doing your stretches.
Why do we need to stretch?
If you are constantly using any muscle in your body, it will be going through phases of being shorter (when the muscle is contracting) and longer (when the muscle is relaxing). However, if you are using any particular muscle a lot you will find that over time it is getting gradually tighter, this may cause you pain in that particular muscle, pain in the joints or pain in completely different areas of the body. This is due to a process called adaptive shortening, when you are using a muscle so much without stretching it, your body thinks it simply doesn’t need to be that long and allows it to get shorter over time. This then pulls other areas of your body out of alignment which can cause you pain. This can also happen if a muscle is resting in a shortened position for lengths of time.
An example of this in the upper body – if you are spending long amounts of time working at a desk and you find your-self hunched over- this can then affect your posture. Over time you may find your upper back starting to hunch over naturally. This is due to the adaptive shortening of the chest muscles pulling your shoulders round and causing pain in the shoulders and upper back.
The exercises
Back stretch (Child’s pose)
Start by kneeling on the floor with the tops of your feet on the floor with your knees hip-width apart. Sit back on your heels and lower your chest until its resting between your thighs. Walk your hands forward stretching your arms as far as you can get. Take deep breaths and relax into the position for around 20-30 seconds, then walk your hands back towards you and sit back onto your feet to come out of the position.
Abdominal stretch (Cobra)
Lay face down on your exercise mat or the floor with your hands under your shoulders. Trying to keep your hips touching the floor, use your hands to lift your upper body away from the floor, looking straight ahead. Hold this position for around 20 seconds then slowly lower yourself to the starting position. Remember to keep breathing throughout.
Chest stretch
Raise your arms either side of the body and make an “L” shape with arms so the elbows are in line with the shoulders and the hands are pointing to the sky. From here (much like the Prone “L” raise) you are going to squeeze between the shoulder blades and move the forearms and elbows back to feel a stretch across your chest.
Upper back stretch (arm across)
Straighten your right arm out in front of you at shoulder height. Then cross your left arm underneath, bending at the elbow and using your left forearm to hug your (straight) right arm towards your chest until you feel a stretch between your right shoulder blade and spine.
Upper back stretch (prayer)
Find a flat surface that you can comfortably rest your elbows on. Place your arms out in front of you placing the hands together palm to palm and rest the elbows on the edge of the surface with your arms outstretched. You are then going to lower the torso, maintaining a straight back, past the surface so the head goes through the arms. Keep breathing and hold this position for 5 seconds, then slowly release and repeat.
Perform these exercises after any cardio or lower body strengthening workouts, or if you are generally just feeling tight. Just be sure your muscles are warm before stretching!
Enjoy!
