Having big strong muscles isn’t always the answer to becoming great at your sport. It’s how you use those muscles that make the difference between good and great. One big thing that most athletes often overlook when training is their flexibility. To make the most of your muscles, you have to learn how to stretch and use your flexibility.
The Muscle Mix
Your body is full of muscles, joints, and tendons. Your muscles are attached to your bones by tendons that make your bones and joints move. The stronger your muscles are, the faster your bones will move, but if your joints and tendons are stiff, your muscles stop short before reaching their maximum power.
Preventing Muscle Pinching
Stretching in the Sun
Increasing your flexibility through stretching not only increases your maximum potential for power, speed, balance and agility, but it also can keep you out of the hospital. The most common injuries are from muscles tears. Muscles tears usually happen when an athlete’s muscle extends too far. Stretching properly can prevent these tears.
Some Stretches
Tummy Tuck
Stretching can be done in so many different ways. Here are some examples:
- Stretching one body part at a time
- Reaching and holding poses with your limbs and body
- Repetitive jumping, swinging, pushing and pulling
- Soft Martial Arts’ motion pieces like Tai Chi
- Yoga with proper breathing and variations of different stretches
The Road to Recovery
Pulling Toes
Have you already torn a muscle? Well then, stretching is the most important thing for your recovery. Doctors will send you to a physiotherapist who will teach you all types of different ways to stretch your injured body part. They even have elastic resistors that help bring back strength to the injured muscle.
Stretching everyday is the best thing for an athlete. The next time that athlete needs to reach that extra bit to jump past an opponent, or to stretch out a stride to win the race, or to bend into a tighter ball to execute another flip, the increased flexibility is the difference.
