Importance of stretching after a workout
How many times have you woken up the day after an intense workout with severe muscle inflammation or pain? Or after a long workday, you feel back, knee, or neck pain from spending too long in one position? Our body often sends us signals in advance, for instance, one of the habits we encounter is stretching when we wake up in the morning. Our muscles, which have been at rest all night, demand movement to avoid atrophy and enhance circulation. This mechanism happens several times a day, and we are often not even aware of it.
Adequate stretching
Particular attention to adequate stretching is paid in the cases of athletes or people who actively train. Depending on the intensity of the workout and the individual's fitness level, muscle inflammation can often occur, which is a situation where the body has spent a long period working above a certain intensity threshold, leading to a buildup of lactic acid in the muscles. Accumulation of lactic acid further affects the muscle's capacity and after a certain period prevents you from achieving a certain performance level. Of course, in realistic conditions, it is much more likely that the exerciser will stop doing a certain exercise. However, what is important is the recovery period after exercising. Quality rest, proper sleep, and nutrition are some factors that can influence the quality of recovery, while on the other hand, within the framework of the training, there is a series of activities we can conduct to minimize further fatigue. One way is correct and organized stretching after a workout.
Stretching can speed up recovery
Stretching after a workout is important because it can speed up recovery by enhancing circulation in already activated muscles, thus improving metabolism, or the flow of oxygen in one direction and the removal of harmful substances in the other, thereby speeding up the "filtering" of muscle cells. Furthermore, stretching the muscle head reduces its stiffness and tension in the tendons, which further directly reduces the risk of injury. Of course, proper stretching minimizes the risk of creating certain deformities by maintaining a balance between parallel muscle groups (for example, two groups of back extensor muscles extend along the spine, where if a disbalance occurs, it can lead to spinal deformities such as scoliosis). In line with this, there is a large number of stretching exercises that enhance performance.
Adequate exercises for stretching
When it comes to exercise itself, you need to make sure that you are performing adequate exercises for stretching a given muscle group, that the exercises are safe to perform and that you know the time interval required to achieve maximum results (usually holding for about 30 seconds in a given position is sufficient). Stretching can also be divided into static and dynamic, where static is much more common in the final part of training because this is the time when our body needs to return to a calmer state and the pulse to resting values (60-100 beats per minute). There are programs like yoga and Pilates that aim solely to increase flexibility and within the main part of the training, they only conduct stretching exercises and strengthen the basic muscle groups by doing exercises with their weight.
On the other hand, you can find a large number of exercises on the internet that you can apply in training. In line with this, the MyFitWorld application, which is the first application in Serbia that allows online exercise, gives you access to a huge number of exercises, and each exercise is systematized according to level, so you can apply stretching exercises regardless of whether you are an athlete or a beginner in exercising!
MyFitWorld Team
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