If you’re trying to maintain a healthy body or improve your physical fitness, flexibility plays an essential role and has many good effects on the body. For example, it improves posture, mobility, muscle coordination, and prevents possible muscle soreness and injuries. It even results in better body shape.
Unfortunately, not all know how to increase their flexibility. If you’re one of them, make sure to keep the following in mind:
Consider Massage And Physical Therapy
Working out your muscles and doing sports activities, like running, place a bigger demand on your body. Muscles may develop some trigger points and tissues may become tighter. In this case, considering physical therapy, massage, and physiotherapy Brisbane or in your locality can be beneficial. This is especially true if you want to reduce your discomfort, pain, or you need ongoing support to develop resilience and strength against future problems.
Aside from that, professionals can offer you treatment exercises that’ll help you boost your neural mobility, which improves the ability of the muscles to work together. Improving neural mobility also enables muscles to tolerate greater strains.
Consider Yoga
If you don’t know where to get started when it comes to improving your flexibility, you can do yoga. Even if its primary focus isn’t increasing your flexibility, some yoga stretches and poses can be of great help to boost your range of motion. Just choose some movements or stretches that are suitable for you.
Move Often
If you sit around all day, it can result in stiff joints. Sore knees, frozen shoulders, or tense necks may happen once you sit for a long period. So, make sure to keep all your joints moving.
Leg swings, doing hip circles, gentle neck stretches, and shoulder rolling can help keep your range of motion. However, be sure not to forget your back because having a tighter lower back can make it hard for you to stretch properly. To take care of your back and avoid tightness, keep moving and always maintain a good posture.
Stay Active
As mentioned above, inactivity can cause joints and muscles to grow stiff and tight. Also, it’s the perfect recipe to reduce your flexibility. If you don’t want this to happen, the perfect solution is to stay active.
Regardless of your preferences, whether you enroll in a strength training session or walk regularly around your area, it can be beneficial to keep your tissues limber, loose, and lubricated.
Tai Chi Is A Good Idea
Known as a good meditation method, Tai Chi isn’t only great for relaxation but it can also be an excellent way to improve your flexibility. Furthermore, as you master the movements in Tai Chi, your posture won’t only improve but it can also make a difference to your flexibility.
Stay Hydrated
Since muscles mostly consist of water, they require enough water to work. Just like your vehicles require oil for lubricating parts and engines, you need water for your muscles.
Other than that, your muscles require the right amount of electrolytes, such as calcium, potassium, and sodium, to function. So, make sure not just to drink enough water, but also consume some sports drinks to get the electrolytes that your muscles need.
Focus On Full Range Of Motion
Even if a partial range of motion can be used in workouts to gain strength, do your best to perform exercises with a full range of motion so you can enjoy more benefits that come with great flexibility. For instance, when doing squats, go full depth to improve your flexibility.
In terms of lighter weights, you should also work at a full range of motion, especially when you’re learning new moves before you choose a heavy working set.
Perform Stretches Regularly
When you stretch, it doesn’t mean that you’re increasing the length of your muscles. It’s actually training your nervous system so it’ll determine the safest range of motion for you. As you grow older, your body learns the basic parameters of what’s safe and what’s not. Once you go beyond such parameters, your muscles will tell your brain that they’ve reached their threshold.
Your body also learns such thresholds from what’s normal for you. However, when you spend all day sitting in front of your desk, your flexibility will lessen. So, what you should do is perform stretches every day and push yourself to your limits.
Conclusion
Flexibility is vital. If you don’t pay importance to your flexibility, you’ll end up getting injured, experience stiff and tight ligaments and muscles, and suffer from pain. So, make sure to keep the above tips in mind to regain and improve your flexibility. Once you apply them regularly and properly, your body will feel better and your range of motion can widen.