5 Stretching Mistakes and How to Fix Them
Stretching is an effective form of exercise that should be a part and parcel of all your routines. The benefits of stretching include making you feel relaxed, improving flexibility, increasing your degree of movement and, warming up your muscles/joints before a workout. However, trainers can only enjoy the above benefits if they do their stretching properly. There are some serious mistakes in stretching that you should avoid. These mistakes can make your workout ineffective and potentially dangerous.
Static stretching
Some people love to do static stretches before they kick off their routines. It turns out this may be a bad move. Researchers and exercise experts have cautioned that you should avoid stretching your muscles when they are cold. Static stretches can reduce your performance and increase your risk of sustaining a muscle strain. Statistics show that pre-workout stretches can cut down your lower-body strength by up to 8%.
However, you can fix this problem by doing dynamic stretches such as lateral lunges and one-leg deadlifts. Dynamic stretches are active movement patterns that help warm up and increase the degree of movement of your joints.
Forcing a Stretch
For a stretch to be effective, it has to make you feel relaxed. Unfortunately, many people do it wrong by trying to force themselves into a stretch. This often leads to muscle strains. The fact is that your muscles become weak when they are extended, but stronger when bent at an angle of 90°. Stretching at the end range when your muscles are weakest, is dangerous because you risk straining yourself.
The solution is to ease yourself into any stretching. If you find that your breathing pattern is becoming challenging, it's time to pause the stretch. If you want steroids to improve your workouts, check them out at 120kgs.
Stretching without any improvement in muscles tightness
In some situations, tight muscles can be very weak. For instance, hip flexors are common muscles that usually become tight and weak. Though you may want to stretch them, you shouldn't do that without good strength.
Solution: First strengthen the muscle area you want to stretch. After that, do medium strength exercises to improve your flexibility.
Over-stretching Muscle Groups
When you over-stretch a group of muscles such as your hamstrings, you introduce an imbalance into your flexibility. This can then negatively impact your overall posture or joint stability.
The fix for this mistake is to always check your opposing muscle groups. For example, when you are stretching the front part of your leg, be mindful of the flexibility in the back part of your leg. When you're stretching your glutes, don't forget to stretch your hip adductors as well.
Not Setting the Time for Holding a Stretch
An effective stretch should be timed appropriately when you're holding it. If you speed up your stretches without holding them for a reasonable amount of time, you won't gain any real benefit.
Fix this mistake by setting your holding time to about 90 seconds for each stretch. Finish 4 to 5 sets of stretches, with each rep lasting 90 seconds.
