How to Stretch Safely

"Do not do rapid head rolls, or roll your head from shoulder to shoulder in the back. This can hyper-extend the cervical spine and can cause pinched nerves in the cervical region."

Stretching is one of the most enjoyable and crucial aspects of exercising, but many people skip it or do it incorrectly. Stretching safely and paying attention to proper form will help a person increase his or her range of motion and reduce injury to joints and muscles.

When we increase our range of motion through stretching, our muscles will be suppler and able to perform the activities that busy lives put before us. Other benefits of stretching include reduced muscle tension, stress reduction, improved posture and coordination, reduced stiffness, and delay of the degeneration of muscles that comes with aging. One of the biggest advantages for an athlete is injury prevention and enhanced athletic performance.

Now that we know the benefits of stretching, we need to know the dangers of stretching. Most of these "dangers" are due to improper stretching, much of which we learned as children and still do today. Even experts or fitness instructors still lead their classes through dangerous stretches.

To understand the difference between a safe and dangerous stretch you need to know the three major stretching techniques.

The first one is ballistic stretching, which is a high force, fast stretch that uses bouncing and pulsing with the body as a weight to stretch the muscle. This used to be a popular method of stretching in aerobics classes, but most instructors have abandoned it because of the dangers involved. To stop these forceful movements, the stretch reflex is activated in the neurological system with ballistic stretching; the muscles actually tighten instead of lengthen, and tearing and muscle soreness is often the result.

The next method of stretching is slow and involves a gradual lengthening of the muscle. The stretch is not held but done as rhythmic limbering.

The most popular form of stretching is static stretching where you hold the stretch in a terminal position from 10 seconds to several minutes. Holding the stretch allows the muscle spindle to relax and lengthen the muscle. This method is considered very safe.

To safely stretch follow these guidelines:

Warm up first by marching, jogging or performing other aerobic exercise for five minutes.

Never stretch until it is painful. Don't stretch beyond your natural range of motion.

Don't hyperextend the joints by locking elbows or knees.

Hold your stretches for 30 to 60 seconds.

Be aware of body alignment while stretching; make sure you are not hyper-extending any joints.

The following are common mistakes or stretching moves that during recent years have been found to be dangerous and must be avoided.

Avoid spinal flexion forward when doing toe touches. Although our backs are made to bend forward, hanging with your head and torso in an unsupported position with gravity pulling down on your back can cause the discs and ligaments in your back to lose elasticity. This will decrease the support in the lower back, and years later you may experience back pain. To stretch your back, you must place the palms of your hands on your thighs for support.

Avoid spinal flexion to the side or side bends. Unsupported stretching to the side, allowing the upper body to pull you down to stretch the opposite side can cause ligament damage. People who can stretch to the side in a horizontal position have already stretched out their ligaments. Ligaments have little elasticity and will never go back once overstretched. This can leave your spine in an unprotected state in later years.

Do not do rapid head rolls, or roll your head from shoulder to shoulder in the back. This can hyper-extend the cervical spine and can cause pinched nerves in the cervical region.

Avoid any bouncing or pulsing

Some do's for stretching:

Stretch while the body is warm. Jog, run or do some type of aerobics for at least five minutes before stretching. For a really nice stretch, sit in a hot tub and stretch after an aerobic workout.

Hold all stretches for at least 30 seconds.

Move in and out of the stretch positions slowly.

For deep stretching, stretch the muscle until you feel a slight bit of tension and hold it for 30 seconds. Then lengthen and stretch a bit farther without bouncing and hold it for 20 more seconds.

Breathe in and out slowly and do not hold your breath. Relax and breathe deeply into each stretch.