The magic pill for achieving your fitness goal is not only sweat and intensity but also involves stretching. Spending hours in the gym to work on your core can give you your dream figure, but when you sit for a longer time, the hamstring of your thighs may get as tight as a gnat's chuff. This is when you realize the importance of stretching. 

When you overlook the power of stretching while building up your muscles and strength, you may have a high chance of getting stiffness in your body, so to avoid stiffness, flexibility is essential, which comes through stretching. 

The Importance of Stretching 

Stretching makes your muscles flexible, strong, and healthy. This flexibility is important during your workout and when you maintain a range of motion in the joints. If stretching is not done, to get the maximum impact of exercise, your body may appear stiff and tight like an iron rod. And when you go for training, the muscle may become weak and will not allow you to extend all the way, resulting in joint pain, muscle damage, and injury. 

Some bizarre advantages of Stretching

1. Stretching develops flexibility

We cannot stress the importance of stretching to make your muscles flexible. Flexibility strengthens the muscles and range of motion to  help them perform their daily activity with ease. To attain a good motion range, you need to follow the stretching routine five to six days a week. At the same time, the temporarily gained range of motion may disappear within one or two days. Although, it results that the nervous system is becoming more tolerant to a particular stretch point.

2. Stretching limits the risks of injury 

Injury is caused due to stiffness in the muscle area. Stretching makes you more limber, the stiffness experiences a slew of meltdowns, provides endurance, and prepares your body for a marathon or quick weight lifts. If you cannot do full-body stretching, even static stretching may loosen up your muscles and allow you to spring into the action. 

3. Your muscle responses better during a workout

A regular stretching routine will help your muscle become liable for better performance in your workout schedule, as the range of motion is directly proportional to the muscle activity. For instance, increasing the range of motion of hamstrings might activate 40% of the muscles while performing a single-leg deadlift. But if one can increase their hamstring flexibility, they will start the muscle activity by 60%. Having a good range motion will help a fitness freak to perform more challenging exercises. 

4. Stretching prepares your body for a workout

All the fitness experts dole out the importance of stretching before a workout. Number one, it prepares the body to absorb high forces. A good and accurate pre-workout stretching builds the mind-muscle connections to fire up extensively.

5. Post-workout calms your body

After a heavy workout session, your body becomes hot and exhausted. Thus, It is imperative to give a little rest to your body to cool down before you start other activities of the day. After workout, relaxing will normalize the heart rate, calm your breathing, and quickly calm your body. Stretching is one of the most prominent ways to relax your body. Stretching after a workout will increase the blood flow, enhance the oxygen level, circulate the proper nutrients to every part of your body, and assist in the recovery process. 

6. Stretching prevents ache 

Sitting is the new smoking, no matter how many times you may avoid this fact but sitting continuously for a longer time gives rise to pain and muscle soreness. It causes severe issues in our hip regions, calf muscles, shoulder, and neck pain, and most importantly, the spine region gets compromised. Stretching for a few minutes a day can combat these issues. Some studies show how regulars stretching even from your bed (if you are lazy ) have helped people recover from their previous injuries. 

7. Maintains the posture

Muscle imbalance can cause bad posture that results in back pain. But with the help of strengthening and stretching of some specific body muscle groups will help you to tackle musculoskeletal pain and promote proper body alignment. By combining them, you can quickly improve your body posture and prevent back pain. A study shows how regular stretching has significantly improved back pain. 

8. Stretching helps to enhance mental health

Besides a good workout, many people rely on stretching for relaxation because it feels as good as having a warm choco-chip cookie or taking a hot water shower. Stretching can reduce stress and bring a calm state of mind to us. Stretching is more effective if you include deep breathing. In deep breathing, you reduce a little bit of your stress every time you release your breath. If you want to boost your mental health, allow your muscles to stretch a bit. Also, a Spanish study revealed that a short program of stretching exercise at a workplace effectively reduced anxiety levels, increased vitality, and promoted general health and flexibility among the workers.  

Wrapping up!

All that said, while stretching may not help you to shed a kilo or two, it's still a valuable practice that needs to be regulated in your daily routine exercise.  Stretching doesn't involve any particular form, whether you do yoga or pilates - stretching in any form is equally important to ease aches, release tensions and improve blood flow. 

Regular Stretching has been known to bring improvement and maintain a range of motion and allow your body to hold different positions comfortably. 

Now that you've become enlightened with the importance of stretching, don't forget to do your stretching pre or post-workout. Also, remember that the right amount of stretching with an experienced trainer is essential, because if you do a wrong stretch, you can incur more harm and injury. 

Saiyan Health houses the best and finest in-house trainer, do give it a try by visiting our website now.