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By Jason Greenspan
Along with balance training, flexibility is the most overlooked area of any fitness program.
Most fitness enthusiasts go to the gym and do a couple of stretches in the beginning of their workout and maybe for two minutes at the end of the workout. But unfortunately, this won’t cut it to becoming more flexible, especially after the age of 50.
Muscle tightness happens for many reasons. The most obvious comes with age. As we get older muscles and connective tissues tend to shorten or get tighter. Another reason is sedentary activity, such as sitting.
Sitting can encourage tightness through your hips and hamstrings, in addition to your shoulders, chest and back. Also, playing sports or lifting weights without stretching can contribute to tighter muscles and connective tissue. And last but not least, repetitive movement of any kind can cause tightness.
So what can we do to help become more flexible?
The first step would be to have a qualified trainer or therapist perform a postural assessment or various mobility tests to see what muscles are tight.
After you figure out what muscles are tight the next step would be to perform regular foam rolling exercises.
Foam rolling has become quite common practice in most sound fitness programs. Foam rolling is the next best thing to getting a massage. It helps to break knots throughout the body. This is the first step. and quite often can be a bit painful if you have a knot or tender spot. The premise behind foam rolling is to actually find an area that causes some discomfort. If something is painful you know you have a knot and have to foam roll daily on the specific area that causes discomfort.
The next step after you identify the tight spot when foam rolling is to stretch the muscle that was causing you pain during the foam rolling exercise. Hold the stretch for 30 seconds to one minute and repeat three times.
After you stretch the last step to a looser body would be to perform a couple of mobility drills/exercises. This is similar to stretching but quite different. Instead of holding a position for 30 seconds or so, you would move your joints through various ranges of motion. For example, to help loosen your hip your could stand tall holding on to a wall keeping your leg straight, swing your leg forward and backwards or side to side. This will help to increase your range of motion, but works best after you followed steps one and two.
The above steps should be done as part of your warm up in the beginning of your program and if time allows can be repeated at the end of your workout. If times doesn’t permit, try to at least stretch.
Silver Stars Fitness is a private studio and now franchise that specializes in working with the baby boomer and beyond fitness enthusiast.
Silver Stars is set up to be the total opposite of the large commercial club. We actually want you to show up and if you don’t we’ll call, email or text you. We also offer a lot of accountability to help accomplish your goals. We believe good quality instruction along with a lot of accountability will and has helped our clients accomplish their goals.
Services that will help accomplish your goal and get you results are our personal training program or small group training program. So whether your goal is fat loss, improve balance, decrease aches and pains or to increase your overall strength- If you’re serious we want to help you!
To set up your free consultation, please contact us via email or phone.
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See the full Silver Stars class schedule here.
Silver Stars Fitness
850 7th Avenue, Suite 305
New York, NY 10019
646-573-9724
info@silverstarsfit.com
www.silverstarsfit.com
