Stretching a point
November 14th 2008 06:04
Stretching is the simplest, cheapest and most effective way of staying young. It is gentle, easy, safe and sensible. It is disgracefully under-promoted - in my opinion the government should immediately implement a program of tattooing onto the foreheads of everyone who turns 50 the advantages of stretching.
There is much that is misunderstood about it. There is that foolish but widely held dogma, no pain no gain, and there is the perception that stretching is for the young and active. It can be, and if you are young and active my advice to you is get out of my blog and go do something strenuous. Oh, and don't forget to stretch before and after exercise.
If like me your principal form of daily exercise is straightening up in the morning, my advice to you is the same, except you can leave out the exercise part and still get an enormous amount of benefit.
Let's be precise: if you want to live longer, you have to eat well and exercise. Stretching can't achieve that or take its place. However, if you are one of the guilty sofa dwellers who think exercise is positively, definitely something which you will start next week, try some stretching in the meantime.
Why? Stretching will make you feel good. I don't quite practice what I preach - I have spent more time today writing about stretching than actually doing it - but I have done enough of it over time to be able to say, hand on heart, that it can make a big difference to the way you feel.
And the older you are, the more true this is.
Do you remember when you could turn around and look at somebody or something behind you and not feel that the manoeuvre was breaking every vertebra in your backbone? Somewhere in my early 40s this got hard. Somewhere in my early 50s I started doing regular stretches of my neck and torso, and today I turn around and look behind me even when there is nothing there to see; just for fun.
It's everyday things like this which stretching can dramatically affect - getting out of a car, getting off a sofa, rolling over in bed. I feel different just walking down the street.
Just think, five to 10 minutes a day and you, too, can again see what's behind you.
Convinced? If not, a government tattooist will be with you shortly. If yes, here's some further reading:
American study
Calisthenics and stretching
Does stretching help?
familydoctor.org
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