Benefits of Stretching
The Benefits of Stretching
"I never stretch, I don't have enough time and I can't be bothered lying around all over the floor stretching when I am in a hurry to get home from training!" Sound familiar?! I hear it often! And even though it sounds funny when you hear it out loud, it is often the case for many people when training. I can't tell you enough how important stretching is. Stretching plays a major part in assisting healthy training results and gains.
Stretches help prevent injuries while training PLUS increase flexibility
How? "I never stretch, I don't have enough time and I can't be bothered lying around all over the floor stretching when I am in a hurry to get home from training!" Sound familiar?! I hear it often! And even though it sounds funny when you hear it out loud, it is often the case for many people when training. I can't tell you enough how important stretching is. Stretching plays a major part in assisting healthy training results and gains.
About Increasing Your Flexibility
As you already know we are born with fantastic range of movement when it comes to flexibility. Eg baby sucking its toes etc. So what happens? Most of us don't bother to keep up with that type of range of movement as we get older, which means we lose our flexibility. When you think about it the average person doesn't exercise that much at all, let alone going out of their way to train for flexibility.
About Stretching
There are many types of stretches from partner stretches to sports specific stretches. Whatever your activity, it is important to make sure you take a small amount of time out, while your muscles are still warm, to stretch. Please do not to stretch cold muscles because you may damage them further if they are already sore and injured. I could go on about the benefits of stretching for pages, so instead of rambling on, I have just given you a general explanation so you gain a better understanding of why it is so important to REMEMBER TO STRETCH!
Why Cross-Train?
There are lots of reasons to cross-train. Here are a few of them:
It cuts down on the boredom factor. Let's face it, working out can become monotonous at times. Having a whole 'bank' of activities to choose from, putting them together to fit your mood or schedule, and always having a choice of something new to add helps you look forward to working out.
It decreases the chance of overuse injuries. When we do the same activities over and over again, therefore, using the same muscles and joints, over time it can cause musculoskeletal injuries due to just plain old over use. Incorporating many different activities into your regimen will help avoid overuse injuries, by using more muscles and joints in various planes.
It balances your body out. This relates to our previous point: when you use the same muscles all the time, there are other muscles that aren't being used as much. Varying your activities varies the muscles that are used, providing balance to your body.
It increases your intensity. Doing the same activity all the time allows your body to become very efficient at that activity. Therefore, the body doesn't need to work as hard. But throw a new or different activity at it, and it suddenly finds itself back at work. Think of it this way: if English is your primary language, it's easy for you to speak and understand it. Now let's say you know just a little bit of Spanish, and need to use it to get directions. You have to work much harder at communicating. Right? It's the same idea with exercise!
It burns more fat. Because cross-training naturally makes your body work harder, you're also going to naturally burn more fat.
It gives you a reason to try new activities. Chances are there are activities you've been wanting to try, but don't want to spend a lot of time on them. Cross-training allows you to try them in small chunks of time, without taking a chance on over-doing it.