Flexibility is integral to fitness, which is often not taught. Keeping your muscles flexible can help reduce injury and allow your joints to work their best and provide the greatest range of movement. One of the best ways to decrease your chances of aches and pains to increase your flexibility. Improving your flexibility shouldn’t be just for bragging rights. It’s for your health. There are so many ways to keep your body flexible. Include each of these practices to encourage your body to limber up.
Yoga
Yoga is one of the best ways to maintain your flexibility. Many yoga online courses and videos teach you flows and postures that can help increase your flexibility. Whatever your goals, there’s a yoga flow for everyone. Something as simple as Hatha Yoga or Yin Yoga can be a great start if flexibility is your main concern.
The beauty of taking yoga online courses is that flexibility isn’t required. All you need is passion and commitment. Hatha Yoga is one of the easiest flows to learn in the beginning. Meanwhile, Yin Yoga is a slower pace with an emphasis placed on breathing, lengthening, and unwinding. It’s the perfect kind of yoga online class to have after a long and stressful day at work.
Dynamic Warm-Up
A dynamic warm-up is another great way to encourage flexibility. Your warm-up is an important part of your yoga online practice. Not only does it reduce your risk of injury, but it also helps improve your flexibility. Some of the most common exercises include arm extensions, bridges, high-knee skip, and multi-directional lunges.
Making time for a dynamic warm-up before and after your yoga online course can improve mobility.
Stretches
You should follow each workout with a few light stretches. Static stretches after your muscles warmed up can maintain their length. Following your workout, you should lightly stretch the major muscle groups such as your chest, hamstrings, hip flexors, and spine. The older the individual, the longer the stretches should be.
It’s also important to vary your stretches. A combination of dynamic and static stretches can help contribute to your flexibility. Static stretches are best for post-workout, while dynamic stretches are good to include before your workout.
Dancing
Not only does dancing increase flexibility, but it also lengthens your joints and muscles. Zumba has become a dance cardio craze in the past few years. Most dance classes are based on the Zumba dance sequence. There is something to be said about those hip-shaking and shoulder-rolling movements, as they do wonders for your flexibility.
Breathing Exercises
Learning how to breathe before, during, and after your workouts can help increase flexibility. Most people tend to breathe within their rib cage rather than their chest. This increases during times of stress or anxiety and is the major reason why most people feel the tension in their neck shoulders. During your breathing exercises, focus on taking deeper, controlled breaths that last 4-6 seconds, when breathing in, and 6-8 seconds, when breathing out.
You should breathe with your belly rising and your shoulders relaxed. This lengthens your diaphragm and teaches your body how to breathe properly.
Staying Hydrated
Since your muscles are made out of the water, you need enough water to make them work their best. Just like your car needs oil to lubricate its parts, your muscles need water. Your muscles need calcium, electrolytes, potassium, and sodium in order to function. Not only should you focus on drinking enough water, but you should also drink calcium and sports drinks to replenish these crucial nutrients.
