Create a movement and stretching habit: Understand the benefits of daily stretching on your body.
Hello,
Thank you for always being present in this challenge and for taking an interest in the theoretical part of it all! It’s great to create new good habits, but it’s also very important to understand why they are beneficial for us! We are creating a daily habit of moving and stretching and it doesn’t happen overnight.
This time, before you start reading, we suggest you do a little exercise. Ready?
- Pay attention to your posture: your back, your arms, your head, your legs…
- Do you think your posture is good posture?
Well, let’s see this right away:
Stand up in such a way that you feel your body in a good posture, shoulders, back, hips, kneesâŚ.
It is probable that if we could compare your posture with the other readers, the position, recognized as correct, would turn out to be different in certain respects for each of us.
It must be remembered that we did not give instructions to achieve this, and yet, you have succeeded!
How is it possible ?
As Metheny JB puts it so well:
ââŚThere is no unique and optimal posture for all individuals. Each person must take the body they have and make the best use of it. For each individual, the best position is one in which the body segments are balanced in the position of least effort and maximum support. It’s an individual matterâŚâ
It is very beautiful this sentence; but despite this it is still possible for us to identify the â criteria â of good postures.
We start from the principle that the posture must be considered from the point of view of the individual and the use he makes of his body.
However, when these postures deviate too much from certain parameters, they can lead to the development of various pathologies and this is what we seek to avoid.
The causes can be varied, but among them are bad habits (inadequate positions repeated for a long time) and muscle weakness (due to a sedentary lifestyle).
To sum up what we did in our program, create a habit:
- During our first week: we worked on stretching the spine in the different axes!
- The second week, we learn to circulate the blood before stretching. To enhance the benefits of stretching with dynamic exercises .
Even if you don’t feel like you’re making much progress in those first two weeks, know that you’re gradually gaining flexibility.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF WORKING ON YOUR FLEXIBILITY:
â Effort saving:
As our body is more flexible, our daily activities require less energy.
Have you ever woken up in the morning feeling like your body is heavy and hard to move? It’s like a car in winter, it’s hard to start because it’s cold. If you make movements to warm up, morning movements will be less difficult for you, this is called: saving effort.
â Acceleration of recovery processes
On the other hand, in the evening, after using the body all day, whether sitting, standing or running, our muscles are more tense because we have used them. Performing the exercises at this time of day allows us to recover better and faster. We help the body to move more easily the next day after being in a static posture for hours in the morning, because the body has recovered better.
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Pain relief
You have probably already felt your muscles, after an activity like this (playing football, a long walk, playing with your nephewâŚ): the muscle after an activity of a certain duration and/or intensity is felt. As soon as you stop and sit down, you start to feel this short-term pain. The next day and 48 hours later, this feeling is even more intense.
- The cure for that, you are earning it with this challenge!
Moving and doing small stretches relieves pain in the short term, but also avoids possible pain the next day or the day after, because with the measures mentioned above we help you recover faster and better. Without stretching, we recover anyway, but the process is slower on the one hand and on the other hand, if we repeat over time the habit of not stretching, the muscle becomes chronically tense .
That’s all for us and for this week number 2, congratulations on getting there and don’t hesitate to send us your opinions in the comments! If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask us! You can also join the support group for this challenge on Facebook .
