The flexibility is the ability of the muscles to stretch when a joint moves. It is an essential quality for health care, but also for the exercise of all sports activities: there is no discipline in which those who practice it are not permanently performing tasks that make their body a little more flexible.
Flexibility is a property of each of the joints, and therefore the exercises to exploit it to the maximum are also. This is also relative to the person’s age, gender and the degree of training they have had: flexibility is naturally higher in the early stages of life and in women, but people who have trained for much of the time their lives take on a significant difference from those who have not.
Advantages of developing flexibility
The development of the flexibility of the body allows protect muscles and to the joints from any possible injury, in addition to providing a greater range of motion.
A relaxed muscle it has a greater facility to perform a rapid contraction, and therefore a greater potential for the development of greater force. This is why there is a direct relationship between flexibility and the ability to execute movements with power, which explains the direct relationship between sport and flexibility.
Most people who exercise do not refer to the part of stretching and flexibility when they talk about their training routine. However, most sports-related doctors choose to think of physical preparation as a triangle in which one axis is strength, another is activity development, and another is flexibility: it is simply about grade to grade. which the body can easily stretch.
Flexibility as therapy
Regarding the latter, being more and more flexible may be the way to end with some types of chronic pain, which people usually acquire when they cross a certain age, such as that of the lower back area.
Some activities specially designed for the elderly, such as Pilates, which combines stretching exercises with other flexibility exercises, managing to stretch the muscles and increase the mobility of the joints.
Examples of flexibility exercises
Flexibility exercises, as said, vary by capacity and the previous preparation of the person who performs them, but in all cases it is recommended to do it after some warm-up exercises so that the tissues are prepared for elongation.
In all cases, it is about holding the position for 20 or 30 seconds, and repeating the position 3 or 4 times.
- Clasp your hands behind your back, and lean forward keeping your back as straight as possible.
- Keeping your arms straight, make circles with them starting at the shoulder.
- With your hands facing forward, bend your arms to the sides while bringing your shoulder blades together.
- Bending the head forward by pressing with the hands.
- With your arms resting on a wall, and with your spine straight and your heels on the floor, perform the movement of pushing the wall.
- Pressure of an elbow with the other hand, from behind.
- Cross one of the arms in front of the chest, and place the other hand at the elbow.
- Place one arm behind the head, and the other hand on the elbow, and then press down on the elbow without moving the head forward.
- Place the left hand on the right knee, and press it towards the left shoulder.
- Lie on your back with your legs straight, and then lift one of them with your knee bent, pulling towards your chest.
- Raise your arms one by one, as high as possible.
- With the hands resting on a wall, one foot is placed forward and one back, to press towards the wall without detaching the heel of the back leg.
- With one foot resting on the floor, bring the other to the buttock with your hand.
- Sitting on the floor, pass one leg over the other that is extended.
- With your legs spread twice your shoulder width, place your weight on one leg while bending that knee.