Stretch Goals

When I am there with my weight training clients, they stretch.  In fact, I offer assisted stretching.  At the very least, I’m standing there reminding them to do it, watching the few form issues that stretching presents, and encouraging them to stick it out for a few more breaths.  I remind them that doing it more often makes it easier.  I suggest that just because it makes them feel good, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t good for them or important.

And almost none of them stretch any other time.

Stretching doesn’t burn calories or produce the high that cardio does.  We don’t get the same kind of sense of achievement we get from lifting a record weight (although for the chronically stiff, that first toe-touch is pretty special).  It just hurts in that good, first-thing-in-the-morning way.  And then we feel better.

So we skip it.  We hurry off to the shower and work and kids and traffic and oh-no-I-forgot-I-have-to-go-to-the-dentist and then suddenly our shoulders are up under our ears and we can hardly turn our heads much less bend down to pick up our shoes.

Five minutes.  We can steal that five minutes somewhere in the day, whether it is a calf stretch while we do the dishes, a quad stretch while we’re on the phone, a surreptitious piriformis/glute stretch (the one where we, sitting down, cross one ankle over the other knee and press the bent knee down) during a meeting, or maybe a triceps stretch while we wait for the microwave to ding.

If we can, longer is better.  A whole yoga or stretching or Pilates session is super double awesome, but even a little can make a big difference in how we move.