Chiropractic Insight: How Stretching Can Keep You Moving
Range of motion does not seem to be a big deal, unless you lose it that is. Then simple tasks quickly become challenges. Harvard Health suggests range of motion can be improved with stretching exercises.
Once muscles are warmed up in workouts, do stretches after each exercise or as part of a cool-down. Hold each stretch for 10 to 30 seconds and repeat three or four times. Holding a stretch too long can risk injuring the muscle. Stop immediately if you feel sharp pain.
If you have had a joint replaced or repaired, ask your surgeon what stretches can be done. If you have osteoporosis, consult your doctor before doing floor stretches or stretches that bend the spine.
Stretches to Try
Calf stretch -Stand in front of a wall. Stretch out your arms with palms flat against the wall and elbows almost straight. Keep your right knee slightly bent, step back a foot or two with your left leg, positioning the heel and foot flat on the floor. Hold for 30 seconds. Bend your left knee while still keeping the heel and foot flat on the floor. You should feel these stretches in your calf and Achilles' tendon. Hold for 30 seconds. Switch legs and repeat.
Hamstring Stretch - Stand far enough behind a chair that you can hold the back of it with both hands and also bend over at your hips until your torso is parallel to the floor. Try to keep your back and shoulders straight so that you feel the stretch in the back of your thighs. Hold the position for 30 seconds.
Side Stretch - Stand or sit up in a chair. Reach upward with your right hand as far as you can while letting your left hand slide gently downward. You should feel this stretch along your rib cage, trunk, and waist. Hold for 30 seconds. Switch sides and repeat.
See Your Chiropractor for More Wellness Tips
Chiropractors have a patient-centered, whole-person approach. They believe wellness and routine chiropractic care should be as basic to our lives as healthy diets and daily exercise.
They offer the purest form of chiropractic care, providing full spinal adjustments using the diversified technique to check for subluxations, which are misalignments of the spine.
Subluxations are misalignments of one or more vertebrae in the spine and/or joints. When the misalignment is corrected it may have far reaching effects on back, neck and sciatica pain. It may also help with allergies, TMJ, arthritis, headaches and migraines.
As a wellness clinic, the chiropractic focus is on daily stresses, aches and pain without use of medications or surgery.
If this direct focus on chiropractic wellness sounds just as great to you as it does to majority of the people in the U.S., make an appointment and find out more.
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