As you get older, it is vital to stretch daily: These three routines will keep you pain-free, flexible, and mobile
Whether you're warming up for a workout, cooling down after exercise, or just trying to undo the damage of sitting all day, these three targeted stretching routines will help you move better, feel lighter, and say goodbye to daily aches and pains
I’ve always been a huge fan of stretching. As I get older, the need to stretch for at least 20 minutes every day is becoming increasingly crucial to how well I feel and function throughout the day. Now, you can stretch just to aid circulation to your stiff muscles, or you can incorporate this into your workout as a warm-up and cool-down routine.
If it is the latter, then performing these stretches will help your body prepare for the intense activity of a workout. The stretches you do after a workout will soothe the soreness and tightness you would be feeling. Frankly, warm-up and cool-down stretches are vital if you don’t want to pick up injuries. Additionally, you can incorporate a round of stretches into your rest days.
In this article, I’m going to recommend three specific stretching routines that you can easily incorporate into your day. Each of them also fulfils separate functions, whether it is to improve your mobility and flexibility, ease the load on painful hips, or help you maintain good posture. If you are experiencing severe pain or stiffness, remember to consult a doctor. However, if you’d like to loosen up your body, these exercises will certainly help.
We start with a simple follow-along routine. This one is great for easing out knots from your muscles and generally improving your overall mobility and flexibility. I often include it in my regular workout routine as a cool-down set, and it has certainly worked very well for me. This is also an excellent set to do on your rest days, as it will ensure that your muscles receive a gentle stretch while also allowing them to recover from the workout load.
This routine is ideal if you need to focus on reducing stiffness in your hips. Let’s be honest, we all tend to slip into a few days (or even weeks!) of a sedentary lifestyle, and before you know it, you are having hip mobility issues and associated pain. This particular routine consists of seven stretches that can provide significant relief from stiffness and back pain.
The final routine focuses specifically on posture correction. I can’t emphasize enough just how important this is—after all, most of our daily aches and pains are a result of poor posture. After all, the human body is physiologically equipped to be active and go through a certain range of motion every day. If we are not mindful and slip up with our activity, it results in poor posture and, consequently, pain. What’s great about this video is that it takes you through how easy it is to develop bad posture and just as easily rectify it. These exercises address the issues with the position of your head, shoulders, and spine in ways that are truly remarkable.
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