Stretching
No exercise program is complete without stretching. Although aerobic exercises, such as walking, running, hiking, biking and rollerblading all burn calories and anaerobic exercises help to build muscle, don't neglect your muscles and joints!Advantages
Stretching helps you promote the health of your joints, ligaments and muscles. It improves circulation and decreases stress, and helps avoid exercise-related injuries. Stretching also has the added benefit of helping to prevent disabling osteoarthritis.
Exercise guidelines
Most people can benefit from slow, static stretches following their exercise cool down. That's because the muscles you have used during your workout tense up from exertion and need to be coaxed back to a resting position. Stretching also helps reduce muscle soreness.
Although it's tempting to perform stretches only for the parts of the body you have just exercised (thighs and calves for walkers and runners, shoulders and arms for tennis players, for example), your entire body can benefit from a few minutes of stretching. You should perform stretches on every muscle group shoulders, chest, arms, stomach, back, lower back, hip flexors, quadriceps, hamstrings and calves. This will help you to release muscle tension, increase muscle flexibility and expand the range of motion of your joints. Then you'll find practically everything you do - daily household chores or sports activities - becomes easier to perform.
If it hurts, stop! The idea is to gently stretch the muscle, not to yank it into an injured state.
