Safe Stretching Strategy

Feel the Target Muscle

As you slowly proceed through the movement, you should feel a stretching sensation in your muscle as it lengthens and relaxes. If you feel a sharp pain in a joint, such as your knee or elbow, you have either gone too far or are using improper technique. If you feel nothing at all, you either have not gone far enough or are using improper technique.

Relax

It sounds simple, but many people tense up as they stretch. They clench their jaws or hunch their shoulders toward their ears. Stop doing this! Notice whether you are clenching with any other muscles in your body and gently allow those muscles to release as you exhale.

Breathe Into It

Deep breathing helps relax your muscles, enabling you to stretch farther. If you breathe slowly and deeply as you stretch, you’ll increase blood flow throughout your body, making your stretching more effective. Always exhale as you move into the stretch. As you hold, inhale by expanding the abdomen, rib cage, and chest, then exhale as you visualize your breath flowing through the tension you feel in your muscle.

Give Special Treatment to Tight Spots

Prevent muscle imbalances by training the major muscle groups equally. If you are tighter on one side of your body (you’ll know because each stretch on that side of your body will feel a lot harder and you won’t be able to go as deeply into the stretch), stretch that muscle for twice as long or repeat a stretch on that side to even things out.

Stretch Each and Every Day

When it comes to flexibility, what you don’t use, you lose—and quickly. Studies have shown that clearly. The lesson: It is much better to stretch a little every day than to do a large stretching routine once or twice a week.

Use Proper Body Alignment

It’s easy to cheat when you stretch, but then you fail to get the stretch you need. The most typical “cheating” is rounding your back. In 95 per cent of all stretches, you want to keep your spine long and flat. Before bending forward into any stretch, first inhale and extend upward, creating as much space as you can between each vertebra in your spine. When you bend forward into a stretch, bend from the hips, not the waist. As you bend forward, your pubic bone should move forward while your tailbone moves back and up.