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.
