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You could benefit from starting your day by stretching
Stretching your body helps with things like flexibility, stress, and pain reduction. Here is how and why you should do it more often.
Woman stretching in the beams of the sun
Are you tired of waking up sore and inflexible? Not to worry. In this article, we’ll go over the top benefits of stretching in the morning. We’ll talk about flexibility, stress, and pain reduction.
Benefits of stretching in the am
Why do we stretch when we get up?
When you sleep, muscles relax, blood flow decreases, and your heart rate slows. If you are lying in the same position all night, your muscles tend to tighten up. Humans, like other animals, instinctively stretch after sleeping to get the blood flowing and wake up the muscles. Stretching after sleep and increasing blood flow also just feels good for all parts of the body.
Beyond the morning stretch, you can help your body and mind even more by developing a routine. No matter what your daily routine is, whether you’re moving a lot, or sitting at a desk, you still need to do it.
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Overall, the benefits of stretching are numerous and morning stretches should not be ignored.
You can affect your flexibility if you ignore simple stretches. After waking up from a long night’s sleep, doing a stretch will aid your mobility, help you avoid injury, and help you focus throughout the day.
Your lower back stretches
If you work at an office job, your muscles in your lower back can become compressed after sitting for long. This, in turn, will cause lower back pain. By stretching, you can fix this. But, you don’t need to wait until you’ve sat all day.
Simply start your day with some lower back stretches.
Stress reliever
After you wake up, you may start to worry about the coming day. Instead, focus on doing a stretch throughout your entire body. This will help diminish any stress caused by physiological or psychological factors.
Stress causes tension to build up in your body. To help relieve tight muscles, set aside a few minutes each morning to relax it.
Increase your mobility
Being able to move around helps your daily activity. If you’re stiff all the time, getting out of the car or going grocery shopping will become difficult.
Stretching will keep your muscles flexible and will allow you to have a better range of motion in your joints. Without flexibility, your muscles shorten and tighten. Therefore, when you do an activity with tight muscles, your muscles are weak and unable to extend. This puts you at risk for muscle damage or strains.
Take advantage of morning stretches to prevent this.
Improve your posture
One of the benefits of stretching is an improved posture. Most people who sit in front of a computer have poor posture due to overstretched back muscles. If you include specific stretches that focus on your chest and back muscles, you can loosen them up.
This will help make your posture more flexible and robust.
Fewer aches and pains
Morning stretches will help end aches in your joints and muscles. These pains can develop throughout the day, but you feel them in the morning because you’ve rested all night. Morning aches occur because of an increase of fluid in spinal discs and joints. Use gentle stretches to help ease joint discomfort.
Zulu is a qualified biokineticist and cofounder of PopUpGym.
Follow her on Instagram: @letshego.zulu; Twitter: @letshegom; Facebook: Letshego Zulu
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