Let's Talk Flexibility

30 Jun 2021Alison Blanchard - Exercise Specialist

Flexibility can be improved through stretching, lengthening, and loosening your muscles, and the benefits of improving your flexibility will feel great! However, good flexibility doesn’t come overnight, progress happens over time.

Let’s talk about flexibility!

Greater flexibility can help improve performance, deepen your range of motion and decrease your chance of injuries as well as improving your day to day quality of life.

Continue reading to learn more about flexibility, and it’s benefits for your body and how DediKate is here to help you along the way!

What is Flexibility?

Flexibility is the ability of your muscles and joints to move effectively and deeply through an unrestricted and pain-free range of motion! More simply, flexibility can be defined as, how far you can reach to touch your toes, or the ability to go deeper into some exercises, or even, to reach way back to scratch an itch on your back. Basically, it’s the ability to move your own body freely!

The degree of flexibility you experience varies from person to person, as well as between your joints and muscle groups. It is a result of many different factors such as anatomical structure, genetics, age, gender, history of injury, and activity levels. The good news is that if you are feeling that you’re not very flexible, there are easy and simple ways to improve it!

What are the benefits of improved flexibility?

By improving your flexibility your body will receive some amazing benefits, something we can all use!

These include:

Helps to reduce injuries
Improves posture
Improves range of motion
Improves strength
Improves overall body performance
Helps to improve, prevent and correct muscle imbalances
Decreases chances of falling and helps provide stability to catch yourself if you slip or fall.
Help to reduce joint pain and strain

So you're ready to get more flexible?

Read on to find out how!

How can I improve my flexibility?

Improving flexibility is easy! The best thing you can do to help improve your flexibility is to warm up before workouts or activities and stretch afterwards, or include yoga practices into your workout week. This will allow your muscles to be ready for the exercise they are about to do. By stretching afterwards you’ll help release and recover your muscles so you’re ready for your next workout or daily chores! Stretching is the lengthening and loosening of muscles and connective tissues to improve flexibility. Stretching comes in many forms, like yoga! Yoga is great to activate and stretch your muscle groups simultaneously.

Stretching can be done in a few ways but here are some things to keep in mind when you stretch:

Make sure you stretch your entire body.
Hold stretches for about 15-60 seconds, this will ensure you fully activate that muscle group.
Do the same stretch on both sides of the body, it is important that whatever you do to one side you do to the other! Our bodies like balance!
Stretch as far as you feel comfortable, listen to your body. It is normal to feel a bit uncomfortable during a stretch, however it should not be painful!
Focus on your breath work throughout your stretches, breathing in and out slowly to help bring oxygen to your muscles.
Most importantly, listen to your body!

At DediKate, we’ve got you covered for improving your flexibility!

The below workouts and sessions will be beneficial in increasing your flexiblity, therefore improving your other workouts! Add these into your week and over time you will start to feel the improvement: