Q: My wife has been through your program at your office and now wants me to stretch with her every day. She does not have pain anymore (thanks) so why should she be continuing these stretches? (and making me do it with her)
A: One trait we’d all like to preserve for as long as possible is our flexibility, the ability to bend and move as required by the demands of daily life and those activities we enjoy. Regular chiropractic treatment is one way to achieve that goal. But something you can do on your own to reach that goal is to stretch regularly.
On your next visit to your chiropractor, discuss your daily activities and your recreational preferences. He or she can prescribe a set of stretches that will help. Stretching helps with flexibility and reduces the risk of tears in muscles and tendons. It can also help with recovery after an activity. You don’t have to be a tri-athlete to benefit from stretching. Before cleaning the house or the yard, shoveling snow—just to name a couple of relatively mundane chores most of us have to tackle—you should stretch a little. Additionally, increased flexibility of the neck, shoulders and upper back can improve respiratory function.
Think about flexibility in terms of your daily activities. If you are not planning on wrestling an alligator any time soon, you don’t need to be able to touch your forehead to your knees. However, if you have practiced the movement of stretching the hamstrings regularly and have kept reasonable range of motion in your back, you are much less likely to end up in my office from such a simple thing as putting on your shoes. It happens. The point is, keep your body able to move beyond the ranges of motion you use every day and you won’t end up so stiff that those daily movements will cause you an injury.
It is also not a bad idea to ‘cool down’ after fairly rigorous activity with some light stretching. When muscles and tendons are warm, they stretch a little more easily. Also talk with your chiropractor about the right and wrong ways to stretch. Flexibility is an easy thing to maintain, but a very difficult thing to attain.
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