Boot Camp Tip – Importance of Stretching

Coppell Boot Camp Tip of the week. Importance of stretching along with some great stretching you can do at your office or home throughout the day to help you.

Boot Camp Tip – Importance of Stretching

Coppell Boot Camp and Personal Trainer Tip of the Week – Stretching

Tip of the week:  Stretching

Hello my name is Chaney Respondek and I am a personal trainer with the Get You in Shape Program in Coppell.  Today I am going to talk about the importance of stretching.  To begin, let’s discuss the reasons we stretch at Boot Camp.  First of all, when you come to Boot Camp, we want to help prepare your muscles for a great workout.  Stretching before and after a workout will help prevent injury and minimize muscle soreness.  Stretching also will increase your flexibility which provides a wider range of motion allowing for a greater ease of muscle movement in all activities throughout the day.  A simple task of tying your shoe or picking up something off the floor will be much easier if you have better flexibility.

When I first started boot camp I just wanted to start working out and forget the warm up and cool down.  I didn’t want to take the time because I just wanted to start burning calories and felt I “didn’t have time to do the stretching”.  On my off day cardio times, I admit I was very guilty of not stretching before running and I did experience a lot of shin splints, muscle soreness, and stiffness.  After talking with Julie McCan (Get You In Shape Personal Trainer)  one day, I tried focusing on taking the time to stretch before and after a workout and I really noted a difference in a quicker recovery time.StretchDesk

Some more noted benefits of stretching include the following:

  • Improved flexibility, endurance, and muscular strength.
  • Reduced muscle soreness, aches, and pains.
  • Improved muscular and joint mobility.
  • More efficient muscular movements and fluidity of motion.
  • Increased ability to exert maximum force of muscles.
  • Prevention of lower back problems.
  • Improved body alignment and posture.
  • Helps prevent muscle imbalance by lengthening tight overused muscles and strengthening underused muscles.

To be the most effective, stretching is something you should do every day to help increase your flexibility and reduce injury.  Recent studies have shown that fewer injuries from working out are a result of weeks of stretch training.  We will always do stretching at boot camp, but we really want you to perform stretching on the days we don’t see you.  I am going to show you a few stretches you can do while sitting at your desk at work.  Hold each pose for about 5-10 seconds then repeat 2-3 more times.

  1. Reach your hands as high as you can up to the ceiling, stretching the torso.
  2. Extend arms out to the side, then try to squeeze the shoulder blades together.  This is a great stretch for the chest.
  3. Extend arms to the front and lock your hands together, round your back while bringing your shoulders forward, looking at your knees.
  4. Moving on to your legs, bring one knee up in the air as high as you can.  Hold briefly then switch with the other knee.
  5. Now extend the leg and raise your foot to the ceiling as high as you can.  Repeat on other leg.

You can also add some shoulder and neck rolls to help you relax.  Not only will these help improve your flexibility of your muscles but studies also show this will help your mental focus while working.

Hope you enjoyed this tip and can incorporate of few of the stretches throughout your day.

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