Flexibility

Some people get an image of a highly trained athlete such as a professional gymnast or a marathon runner when they think of the word "flexible".

In truth, although athletes of all kinds need to be flexible to some degree, that doesn't mean that the average person doesn't also need to take part in flexibility training exercises.

Depending on your individual lifestyle, there could be a myriad of different reasons why you would want to be flexible. Everyone from a manual laborer to someone who simply wants to work in their garden can benefit from a decent amount of flexibility.

However, one of the most important reasons for being flexible is to prevent injuries.

Injury Prevention via Flexibility

Although the strength of your muscles is important, you must understand that your muscles are attached to your bones by tendons, which need to be flexible, and your joints are all supported by ligaments, which also need to be flexible.

Your tendons connect your muscles to your bones, and without the minor flexibility that your tendons have, your muscles would not be nearly as effective at powering your activities. That being the case, the more flexible your tendons are, the more you will be able to apply your strength through larger ranges of motion.

Likewise, your ligaments connect all of your bones to each other, and their level of flexibility also greatly enhances the actual range of motion that any given joint is allowed. 

The easiest way to see the relationship of your range of motion as allowed by the flexibility of your tendons and ligaments is to simply stand up, lock your knees, and bend over as far as you can, trying to touch your fingertips to the floor.

People who do not practice flexibility exercises on a regular basis will have a hard time actually touching their fingertips to the ground. During the attempt, however, the tendons that connect your hamstring muscles (back of the leg) to your femur (large thigh bone) will be activated. The more flexible they are, the closer you will be able to get your fingertips to the floor.

Hamstring injuries are one of the most common injuries in many sports, but you don't have to play a sport to be at risk for pulling the hamstring muscles themselves, the tendons that connect them to the body, or the ligaments that surround your knee joint.

The same thing can be said for the shoulder joint, another common area for injury both in and out of the sporting world. The shoulder joint is the most complicated joint in the human body, and its mass of muscles, tendons, and ligaments all work together to support that joint during use.

However, as with your hamstrings, the shoulder joint, or any other joint, the old adage that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link is very true.

At any given joint, the muscles, tendons, and ligaments that connect your bodily tissues and power your movement all work together. If there is an imbalance in any of those areas, it is likely not a matter of if you will get an injury, but rather a matter of when.

Flexibility Exercise Guidelines 

There are many different schools of thought regarding how to properly do flexibility exercises. However, regardless of which point of view that you personally subscribe to, there are some basics that apply across the board.

1. Extreme flexibility exercises should not be done prior to working out. In this case, "extreme" means any flexibility exercise that stretches any given joint to its extreme range of motion. By doing so, you run the risk of "pre-weakening" that joint prior to exercise, thus drastically increasing the probability that you will get injured during the exercise session.

2. You should never "bounce" when doing flexibility exercises. Your tendons and your ligaments only have a certain amount of "tensile strength," which means they can only handle a certain amount of physical stress. If you increase the physical stress on a tendon or a ligament past its present level of tensile strength by bouncing or adding additional resistance, you will get an injury - and a very painful one at that.

In order to increase the tensile strength of your tendons and ligaments, only stretch to the point where you feel a slight pull, and then just stay in that position. By doing that many times over the course of weeks or months, you will build up both the tensile strength of your tissues as well as your level of flexibility.

3. You should practice your flexibility exercises as you are cooling down after a workout or a sporting even. In most cases you should hold each stretch for at least 20-30 seconds.

The easiest way to illustrate why you should stretch out while you are cooling down is to imagine your tendons and ligaments as taffy, or some other chewy candy.

If you hold taffy in your closed hand for several minutes, it warms up and becomes very pliable. You can stretch it in many different ways without actually breaking it. Your tendons and ligaments share that concept of increased flexibility when they are warm, such as they will be after working out.

Now, imagine that you take your taffy in its stretched out position, and you put it in the freezer. Come back an hour later and the taffy has now solidified into the new shape, and it is very difficult to stretch unless you warm it up again.

Your tendons and ligaments are the same way. If you hold them in a stretched position as your body is cooling down, you are doing the equivalent of putting your taffy into the freezer. Although your tendons and ligaments will never be as inflexible or as cold as taffy in a freezer, the same basic concept applies.

Stretch out your bodily tissues as you are cooling down, and over the course of time they will eventually just hold that stretched position, rather than reverting back to their former inflexible state.

For an exhaustive database of exercises that personal trainers use to put together flexibility workouts, strength training workouts, and yoga and pilates movements, be sure to check out Fitness Generator.

This concludes Part IV of the Health, Diet, and Weight Loss Checklist Series. Feel free to share your comments on this entry, and you may also click here to read the other entries from this series.