Did you know that stretching has a substantial impact on your body and your overall health? It has been proven that stretching improves your physical performance, decreases your risk of injury, aids joint mobility, increases blood flow, and enhances musculature efficacy. However, unfortunately, stretching is a major component of exercise that is put on the back burner.
Oakville Physiotherapist Stretching Routine:
It’s a known fact hat exercising is essential to maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Stretching can easily be incorporated into your daily routine and/or your regular work out. Stretching is also a key aspect in workout classes like Pilates and yoga.
Many patients our Oakville Physiotherapy team treats are experiencing injuries that could have been avoided or minimized by proper stretching and stretching is an essential part to our corrective treatment program.
Physiotherapy Oakville: Benefits to adding stretching into your workout:
- Increased Circulation: Stretching has been proven to increase circulation when practised on a regular basis. During stretching exercises, there is an increase in blood flow, nutrients, and oxygen throughout the body. Not only does this aid in muscle recovery, but it also increases your body’s overall health.
- Increased Range of Motion: Stretching has been proven to increase range of motion and this is great for your joints! Healthy joints means that you can keep active, have better balance, and become less vulnerable to future injuries.
- Stress reduction: Tight muscles equal stressed muscles. Stretches are a great way to lessen the stress a body is experiencing. A stressed body is more prone to injury and declines in overall health. In addition to helping your muscles out, it will help your entire body feel recuperated and energized as it releases endorphins!
- Alleviate strains and pains: If your routine doesn’t include an adequate amount of stretches your body will become more susceptible to strain, pain, and injuries. Stretches not only helps relieve strained muscles but help the build muscle in weak spots. Weak muscles are especially prone to injury and stretching is a simple way to build them up!
The Different Types of Stretching
There are a variety of stretches that may be used by our Oakville Physiotherapists to improve your health. The different types of stretches include:
Static Stretching
This type of stretching is most common. Static stretching involves your muscles and surrounding components to be deliberately stretched and flexed. During static stretching, you will be performing certain positions, either sitting or lying down, for 30 to 45 seconds.
Dynamic Stretching
Dynamic or active stretching involves your muscles moving through their full range of motion. Therefore, it is a movement-based type of stretch.
Ballistic Stretching
This type of stretching uses momentum or force of a moving body to try to extent your body past its normal range of motion. It is typically only recommended for higher intensity activities that involve exceeding your comfortable range.
Stretching and Your Physiotherapy Treatment
During your visit at our Oakville Physiotherapy clinic, our physiotherapist might provide you with some stretching recommendations for you to perform either at our clinic with the physiotherapist or at home. Our Oakville Physiotherapists will provide you with stretching to help strengthen your muscles and alleviate the underlying cause of your pain. By providing stretching, our physiotherapists
Tips For Stretching:
- Always warm up before stretching. By warming up you will be readying your muscles for the stretch. Our physiotherapists always relate muscles to taffy, they are always much more mobile when they are warm. Some warm up activities can include walking, squats, arm circles, lunges, and shoulder rolls.
- Don’t forget to stretch both sides! Even though one side is more in pain or the cause of the problem, or one side is more flexible than the other, always try to get the same amount of stretch. This ensures balance on both sides of our body.
- Try to avoid pain. We always think a stretch is only effective when we feel some sort of pain, but this is not the case! Stretching does not have to be a painful activity, it is supposed to help alleviate the muscles of soreness rather than create it. While stretching we recommend to push your self to a point of discomfort rather than pain. Stretches should be a slow, relaxed movement.
- Don’t hold your breath! Our first tendencies while stretching always results to us holding our stretch when the movements become somewhat difficult. However, when we hold our breath, we are tensing our body and not letting us achieve our full range of motion. When stretching, try to breathe through the movement and push yourself to new lengths!
- Perform stretching everyday and especially after workouts. Stretching everyday provides immaculate improvements to our body. Stretching helps reduce pain, improve flexibility, promote circulation, better performance, and so much more. So, incorporating it into your daily routine is important! After working out, our Oakville Physiotherapists recommends to perform static stretching. During workouts, our muscles shorten when they contract, therefore, by doing stretches you are lengthening them again. And better yet, you will already be warmed up from your working so its a perfect time to stretch!
Should You Stretch?
There is a very simple answer to this question… YES. Stretching isn’t just for those who work out! It should be included in everyone’s daily routine to maintain his or her overall health. People of all ages and of all workout regimes can increase their body’s functions and susceptibility to injury through regular stretching.
Looking for even more hands on therapy for your pain? Check out our Oakville Massage Team.
Stumped on ideas? You can ensure that you have plenty of ideas by checking out our strength and stretching exercises page!