What do you need to stretch to prevent pain?

I recommend an all encompassing stretching program of the following:

1. Neck

2. Shoulders and arms (Front, back and sides)

3. Abdomen and back

4. Hips and thighs (front and back)

5. Calf and feet (front and back)

So how do you fit all this stretching in every day?

In the beginning I recommend breaking it up, so stretch a little every day but not all stretches every day.

So when you’re first starting a routine do neck and shoulder stretches on Monday, then Tuesday forearm and hands, abdomen and back on Wednesday, Hips and thighs on Thursday, calf muscles and feet on Friday.

Form a routine of stretching

It’s easiest when you’re first forming a routine to break it up into smaller chunks. You’re still learning the stretches so do just a few stretches each day. That way you can watch the video and practice along, you can pause and make sure you’re getting in good form.

Once you don’t have to rely on the videos quite so much and you know how to do every stretch you can add more stretch to each day and you make one routine of stretches to do M, W, F and the other set of stretches on T, Th, Sa and do your favorites again on Sunday.

As you get even better with the stretches you’ll eventually want to combine them into 1 routine that you do daily. You will end up stretching at the end of every kind of workout: strength, walking, running, biking, balance etc.

In the beginning you can start with just a few stretches to get a handle on them while you're also working on strength and cardiovascular programs. You never want to do just stretching, it needs to be part of an overall fitness routine. Strength training can be 3x/week, walking daily, other more taxing cardio workouts like running may be every other day. 

If you’re not sure how to do this contact me and I can help you get started.

Ok let’s recap: The best way to prevent pain with stretching is to get into a regular stretching routine. Start off small and slow, start off stretching a few areas each day, focusing on 1 or 2 major muscle groups a day until you’ve gotten a handle on how to stretch each area. Over time make your daily stretching routine longer, stretch every major muscle group daily, and make sure to do strength and cardiovascular workouts 3x/week as well.

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