INTRODUCTION TO STRETCHING EXERCISES
AUTHOR: Abel Renovell Blasco.
Physiotherapist
INTRODUCTION
Nowadays stretching exercises play an important role in sports training, during warming up as well as during recovery. Stretching exercises have a beneficious effect on the sportsman’s organism, helping him to prevent injuries, improving his efficiency and yielding, helping him recover faster from an intensive training and improving the rehabilitation in those sportsmen who have already suffered injuries.
On the level of the articulations, stretching exercises stimulate the prodution of synovial liquids. This liquid protects the cartílago articular agains wear and tear, stimulating the lubrication of the articulatory bones and avoiding the articulation loses elasticity, thusly turning into an imperfect and rigid articulation.
The musles and tendons of our body benefit the most from stretching exercises. Stretching is the easiest way to relax the body and to return elasticity to the muscles and tendons which very often are shortened because of the exessive efforts the sportsman does. Stretching is an excellent way of preparing the locomotor system for muscular efforts: they improve the movement capacity by increasing the muscular elasticity and they help sooth the tiredness produced after an excessive training.
In order for all of these effects to be produced, it is necessary to know the right stretching techniques. You can often see sportsmen do ‘rebounds’ or they stretch until they feel pain, or they make brusque movements, without being aware of the fact that they are actually hurting their bodies, instead of helping it. What’s more, a lot of sportsmen think it is unnecessary to stretch, they want to start training right away or they do not have enough tiime to stretch. They must know that warming up and especially stretching exercises bring the locomotor system in a perfect state for the best sports performance.
Stretching must be done gradually and continuously in time. In order to increase the flexibility it is necessary to maintain each position for 6 to 10 seconds. Stretching exercises should take between 10 and 15 minutes. It is necessary to stretch both halfs of the body, paying more attention to those muscles that will participate actively in the sports activity. In order to increase the elasticity it is necessary to perform stretching exercises 3 or 4 times per week. A frequent mistake is to hold breath during the stretching exercises or to breathe faster. One should breathe freely, without haste or retaining breath.
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