Do you stretch every day? If you do, then a big “high five”! You’re in the minority.
Stretching usually doesn’t rate highly on the priority list of daily activities for most people.
Yet it’s an activity that can have a profound impact on not only the quality of your daily life, but also the quality of your physical mobility and capability as you age…something we’re all doing right now, getting older!
Just ten minutes of stretching at the beginning or end of the day (or both) is a proactive way of reducing the risk of health issues or injuries and leaves you feeling refreshed, relaxed and energised all at the same time…like taking an internal shower!
Here are the biggest benefits of daily stretching:
STRESS RELEASE
Stress is created in your mind, with the effects ending up in your body. If we don’t release or get rid of stress hormones from our body each day, they just stay there. And each day they get topped up and added to, leading to potential mental and physical health issues.
Stress is sneaky, it accumulates slowly without you realising until you release the stress, and you get that relaxed and energised feeling back. This is the feeling you get after doing a pilates class partially due to stress release, and why developing a daily stretch habit will you cope with the potential stress of daily life by not letting stress build up in your body and of course in your mind.
MUSCLE RELEASE
Tense and tight muscles!!! If you have postural imbalances, sit for extended periods of time, have injuries or experience stress on a daily basis, chances are you have tight and tense, over working and most likely sore muscles. Now you could go and get a massage to release the muscles, and you would get relief, but most likely for a short period of time.
But a more permanent solution would be to…just stretch the muscles every day! It’s that simple! Stretching is like any other type of fitness training; you need to commit to doing the work to get the result. It’s not normal to have tight, tense muscles and can lead to potential injuries or loss of mobility further down the track. Don’t wait for an issue to “suddenly” happen, be proactive and do a little every day as prevention, you’ll be glad you did.
JOINT RELEASE
As we age, the health of our joints becomes crucial to the quality of physical mobility we have. Nobody wants to be the person who can’t climb the stairs, can’t get out of a chair or has a fall and can’t get up off the ground. Joints love being moved, it’s what they are built to do! And we have around 360 joints that need to be moved every day!
Mobilising and moving joints, especially the spine with a daily stretch routine provides lubrication and gives the joints opportunity to move through their full movement capacity. The shoulder is a great example. It has a huge movement capability, which unfortunately doesn’t get used when you sit in front of a computer all day. If we don’t move a joint, it gets rusty, and over time will seize up and potentially lead to degeneration and the need for surgical intervention. Daily stretching is such a simple, easy way to prevent this from happening.
FASCIA RELEASE
If you don’t know what fascia is, think of it as the web or glue that holds everything in your body together. It’s also called connective tissue and is the white bits you see in a piece of red meat. Over the past 10-15 years, it has been widely accepted that fascia plays a much bigger role in human movement that we thought.
When healthy fascia stretches, it glides and allows structures in your body, like muscles to move with viscosity and freedom. If fascia never gets stretched, it gets sticky and glues on to structures, like muscles which makes it harder to stretch the muscles and mobilise the joints. That’s why so many people use a foam roller to “release” fascia, but if you stretched it every day, along with your muscles and along with mobilising your joints you could do away with the foam roller!
You have your body for your entire life, and you want it to be capable and resilient for your entire life. Consistency and perseverance is the key to developing a successful daily stretching routine and reaping the benefits.
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