This blog goes hand in hand with my previous blog about why you should run. Stretching is also something that falls into the category of, “if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it.”
Stretching is pretty much forgotten about by everyone. After you graduate high school and you no longer are forced to do stretches at the beginning of PE, stretching is no longer practiced.
Fast forward five years and now you are as stiff as a board. This happens to many people and there is no reason this should be the case.
The first benefit of stretching is it will naturally heal your body. It will take time, but it will heal. That lower back pain can be eliminated through daily light stretching. The stretching will strengthen your muscles in a natural non-stressful way that will allow you to keep working them, so they get stronger. The body is capable of extraordinary things. As long as you keep light blood flow through your body, it can repair the years of neglect.
The next benefit is that when you are inflexible you don’t have as much control of your body as someone who is flexible. When you are building your flexibility, you are also building your overall body dexterity. When you stretch, you are practicing moving your body and with more practice comes more control over your body. Your life will change when you get more control of your body.
When I was very inflexible, I couldn’t sit Criss cross, sit on the floor, or sit in any comfortable position. After practicing stretching and getting more flexible, I am finally able to sit on the floor with ease. This might not seem like an impressive feat if you never new the feeling, but I’ll use an extreme example to get my point across. When you go to the beach and you see all the very unhealthy inflexible people, most of the time they are in big state of the art recliners, do you think they would have as much fun at the beach if they had to sit on the floor and be uncomfortable? I also know from experience that even getting to the floor to sit is hard when you aren’t flexible. Getting up from your seat is even harder, and there are people that are unable to do both.
When you are flexible you have more control of your body, and this coupled with being able to move easier is why everyone needs to stretch, because the older you get the harder it becomes to move!
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