Flexibility is as important to your health as cardio exercise. There are many doctors who believe that stretching does not decrease your risk of injury, but this is one doctor who does. Lengthening and toning your muscles aids in the ability to respond to rapid muscular changes–so when you slip on the ice, your body is able to catch itself and not tear a muscle. Prepping your muscles doesn’t always prevent injury–you may have a genetic proclivity for injury–but it should change the way your body adjusts to these rapid changes. Try these stretches for flexibility 60seconds each, 1x/day post exercise to increase your stretch factor.

Flexibility is recognized as an important component of physical fitness. Like other components of fitness, flexibility is more important for some sports than others. For example, long distance runners tend to be relatively inflexible because the activity of running does not require large deviations in motion. However, sprinters, and especially hurdlers, require excessive hip motion for sprinting and hurdle clearance. Not only are flexibility requirements sports-specific, but they can also be joint- specific. In general, athletes must have sufficient musculoskeletal flexibility to meet the demands of the sport, otherwise top performance will not be achieved and injury risk will increase.

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