Don’t injure yourself and stretch your muscles after exercising.

After doing exercise, you are stiff, your back hurts and you have some contractions. Before going running, you always do some warm up exercises, and, when you finish, you recover your heart rate and breathe deeply several times.

What are you doing wrong?

While exercising, especially after intense activity, lactic acid is released producing fibres. It is indispensable that you stretch all the muscle groups involved in order to eliminate them and avoid contractions and pain.

When you stretch, you lower blood pressure, you keep your circulation active, you reduce physical stress, which helps you relax and repair tissue. You improve your posture, and muscle tone, recover its initial length and improve the coordination of movements because you make the movements smoothly but consciously.

How can you do it properly?

• Stretch each muscle group for between 15 and 30 seconds.
• Look for a comfortable position.
• Don’t hurt Feel the stretch, not the pain.

Basic stretch routine:

1. Standing, shake your legs and arms.
2. Stretch your neck to the right while holding your head with your right hand. Hold for 15 seconds. Repeat on the other side.
3. Cross your hands behind your neck. Elbows together. That way you stretch your cervical vertebrae.
4. Cross your fingers and stretch your arms with the palms to the front.
5. Cross your hands behind your back and stretch.
6. Stretch your hands above your head as if you were being pulled upwards and then fall forward, bending your trunk. Sway backwards and forwards.
7. Sitting, cross your right leg with your knee bent over your straight left leg. Turn your trunk to the left and push the bent knee outwards with your right elbow. Hold for 30 seconds and change legs.
8. Lying down with your arms outstretched, bend your knees and let them fall to the left. Look to the right. You are stretching your back. Hold and change sides.
9. Lying down with your legs stretched, pull up one leg and hold it below the knee. You are stretching thighs and buttocks. Change legs.
10. Pull both legs up below the knee. Sway backwards and forwards to sit up.

To finish, breathe in deeply through your nose and breathe out through your mouth three times.Now you are ready, prepared and relaxed.

This post is also available in: Spanish