Exercise Tip - Stretching
Stretching does a lot to help you gain muscle AND lose weight, that's right lose weight. If your muscles are stretched out, they recover more quickly, the more quickly they recover, the quicker they can get back to burning calories.
Most people know to stretch but they typically stretch before exercise. This is wrong, you should never stretch cold muscles. I know most of us learned back in gym class in 7th grade from Coach Whatshisnuts to stretch out before exercise. But he was wrong. You could do much more harm than good if you stretch cold muscles and tendons. What you should do instead is a warm up. Start slow and escalate until you are warmed and lose.
Now, when do you stretch? AFTER you exercise. Your muscles will be warm and torn and ready for some love. This is the best time to stretch. Stretch your back, stretch your arms, stretch your legs, your neck, your abdomen, everything you can. This goes for any exercise, cardio or weight training, even after your walk. One important area that many of us do not stretch is our hips and most of us as either obese or formerly obese people have hip problems and hip problems lead to other problems with knees and ankles. There are lots of good resources to demonstrate proper stretching techniques, so if you would like to see them, let me know and I will get a few together.
Forgive my ignorance but what is the difference between a warm up and stretching? I seem to remember my PE teacher telling us to stretch to warm up before exercise. How would you do a warm up if you aren't doing stretches?
I am pre-op and need to start exercising. I would love your input so I make sure I do it right and don't do more harm than good.
Laura
Warm up is basically moving around getting your muscles warmed up. So for example my typical warm up is a 5 minutes on a treadmill increasing the incline each minute at 3mph. I do not hold on and I pump my arms to keep my balance. I basically use my entire body increasing in intensity for 5 minutes. But a warm could be just a slower intense version of whatever you are about to do. So if you bench press say 100lbs, you might want to start with 1 set of 10 reps of like 40lbs. Then continue with your routine. The point is to use the muscles you are about to abuse to get blood flow to them and loosen them up.
Stretching on the other hand is pushing your muscle to an extreme and holding it for a few minutes to...well...stretch it out and hold it for 25-45 seconds. The problem when you do this cold is you wont be able to go as far and you are pulling on a muscle that hasn't moved much until that minute. If its warm it will stretch farther and it will already have good blood flow, etc.
talk to me about hip problems and exercises please. I am having serious issues with my hips and they hurt all the time! I am an exerciser (I never that I would say that) and I do body pump (weight lifting class), elliptical and running - but I cant seem to get my hips to stop hurting. Any advice and exercises I can do to help it?
