Why should you stretch? Stretching is useful at any age. It increases your range of motion, keeps muscles limber, improves posture and balance, and helps prevent falls. As you age, stretching becomes even more important. Your joints become less flexible over time. Inflexibility puts a crimp in daily activities, making it harder to walk, raise your arms overhead, or turn your head while backing up the car. It undermines balance, too, which can cause life-altering falls.   Get your copy of Stretching: 35 exercises to improve flexibility and reduce pain   Stretching is an excellent thing you can do for your health. These simple, yet effective moves can help you limber up for sports, improve your balance and prevent falls, increase your flexibility, and even help relieve arthritis, back, and knee pain. Whether you're an armchair athlete or a sports enthusiast, this Special Health Report, Stretching: 35 exercises to improve flexibility and reduce pain, from the experts at Harvard Medical School will show you how to create effective stretching routines that meet your needs and ability. When legs muscles are tight—a common result of too much sitting—you're not able to fully extend your leg and straighten your knee, so your stride may be shortened and less powerful. Inflexible hamstrings have been implicated in chronic low back pain, because they change the tilt of the pelvis, placing more pressure on the joints in the lower back. And for anyone who plays sports or works out, tight muscles may contribute to muscle strains, knee pain, and diminished performance because the muscles aren't able to fully extend.  As you work your way up and down the body, many more examples come to mind. Tight ankle and calf muscles may turn a trip into a tumble. Tight arm and side muscles may interfere with any task or sport involving reaching. Tight neck muscles make it hard to look behind you. Being inflexible can even affect your posture. For example, tight chest muscles can pull your shoulders forward, giving you a hunched silhouette instead of a longer, slimmer looking one.  To learn the benefits of specific stretches and how they help your overall health, read the Special Health Report, Stretching from Harvard Medical School. Share this story:

The ideal stretching routine Stretching promotes flexibility and helps your joints maintain a healthy range of motion—and in doing so, also lowers the chances of joint and muscle strain. But how often should you stretch? How long should you hold a stretch? And how many times should you do each stretch? A panel of experts convened by the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) reviewed a wide range of studies to help answer these questions. Stretching has been studied much less rigorously than other forms of exercise, so the science is not as strong. But, based on the evidence, the panel agreed that: Healthy adults should do flexibility exercises (stretches, yoga, or tai chi) for all major muscle-tendon groups—neck, shoulders, chest, trunk, lower back, hips, legs, and ankles—at least two to three times a week. For optimal results, you should spend a total of 60 seconds on each stretching exercise. So, if you can hold a particular stretch for 15 seconds, repeating it three more times would be ideal. If you can hold the stretch for 20 seconds, two more repetitions would do the trick. To learn more about how to improve your strength and flexibility, read Stretching, a Special Health Report from Harvard Medical School. Image: iStock Share this story:

Featured in this issue

Stretching: 35 exercises to improve flexibility and reduce pain Featured content: • Stretching: The basics • Safety first • Stretching to ease pain • Six questions (and answers) about stretching exercises • SPECIAL SECTION: Warming up for sports with dynamic stretches • Static stretches • Floor stretches Click here to read more »