Ok Team lets debunk stretching?
No, you do not need to become a om guru chanting Namaste on the hour every hour. You dont even need to buy a yoga mat! All you really need to do it stretch! Little and often.
Your muscle are like large elastic bands, and when you look at them under a microscope the muscle are made up of tiny intwined fibres like elastic. If you took 100 elastic bands and intwined them so they became one. Left them still for a few days what would happen? Nothing or so it would look like right? wrong. Those fibes become stiff and cold making them prone to tiny tears. In the human body. When a muscle becomes tight it pulls on bones and causes pain or in some cases can cause bad allignment or worse tendonitis or tendonosis.
How much should you do? answer? - more than you do now and keep that concept. Increase your stretches little by little week allowing your body to adapt. Its unlikely that you will ever stretch too much, bit i wouldnt stretch more than 20 minutes a day ( unless you do yoga, gymnastics or are trying to achieve something more specialised) The general person should be stretching full body 2 times per week or splitting it up over a few days for optimal agility. You will learn to love it i promise.
Still not sure? get in touch and come to our stretch class. Every Saturday at 9:30 am in the studio!
On the last note withought sounding too much like The Dalai Lama stretching is a great oportuning to get centered, gain presence and slow down. You'll find that this will make you so much more aware of your body. So you see stretching is good not only for the body but for the mind and sprit too.
Give it a go, you never know you might like it !
*Disclaimer: Individual results vary based on agreed goals. Click here for details.
