Ah stretching, how I both love and hate you!

Stretching is by far one of the most important aspects of healthy and successful training. It lengthens your muscle fibers and connectivity tissue, improving their ability to stretch further. Being consistent with stretching has a large number of benefits that you should not ignore:

• Increased flexibility, you become more bendy!
• Reduce soreness and tension, which is key to recovering quickly from training
• Reduces chance of injuries
• Can help alleviate stress and improve relaxation
• Improve performance because of the above!

Honestly, you would be remiss if you skipped out on the extremely important activity. However, as I mentioned at the start, I do have a love-hate relationship with it. I absolutely love yoga and practice every day, usually first thing in the morning. Alternating between vinyasa and yin, I practice yoga to help wake my body up in the morning, strengthen my muscles, and increase my flexibility. I actually get grumpy when I don’t get to practice in the morning.

I hate stretching because it is absolutely the last thing I want to do after a workout, which just happens to be one of the more important times to stretch. Stretching after a workout promotes a quicker recovery, allows for deeper stretching due to the muscles being warmed up, and prevents soreness and injury. Knowing all this I will STILL find every excuse under the sun to skip or shorten my post-workout stretch. I just finished a long cardio workout and my legs feel like jelly, why in the world would I want to do MORE working out? I just want to catch my breath, not move!

As much as I hate the post-workout stretch I still take at least five minutes to do it. I learned a hard lesson a few years ago when my right achilles suddenly started to shoot pain anytime it moved. It was discovered that, at some point, I slightly tore it. I didn’t know this so it healed by tightening into a little ball where the tear was, effectively shortening it. I was put in a boot and sent to physical therapy to hopefully resolve the issue. The caveat being that if PT didn’t resolve it then surgery would be next. After a good bit of physical therapy to help slowly stretch it back out it is, for all intents and purposes, back to normal. However, both the sports doctor and physical therapist told me that it occurred because I was not properly stretching, especially after a workout. I need to ensure I stretch afterwards every time to prevent this from recurring.

So, dear readers, stretching; do you love it or hate it?