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Stretch your body, stretch your life

11.15.09Published in health & fitness

stretch

If you want to perform athletically, if you want to do perform everywhere better, improve flexibility, range of motion, avoid injury, increase muscle growth, or simply feel awesome in your body everyday, don’t dismiss stretching. I ignored it for a while, and I paid a steep price…

Growing up as an athlete, I’ve always known the importance of stretching; but like a lot of people, I thought was was invincible and didn’t pay as much attention to it as I should have.

During the first half of 2009, I suffered from Plantar Fasciitis, a well known condition of heel pain. This type of injury generally occurs overtime when the foot part of the body sustains an overload of physical activity without properly being stretched regularly.

The condition manifested itself overnight on the balls of both of my feet, making it impossible to walk, drive, or train. The pain was unbearable in the mornings due to the fascia ligament tightening up during the night, and when standing or getting up after sitting down for a while.

During my rehabilitation through intense stretching and hydro therapy, I learned the injury came from my hamstrings being tight from the hips area down to the balls of my feet, rendering every foot movement extremely painful.

Over the course of 7 months, I slowly cured myself  through yoga where I learned the importance and effectiveness of breath-work and focused stretching (static contract and release stretching) and it has made a huge impact in my daily life both during and after training.

These days, I spend 20 minutes per day stretching (5 minutes at the gym before and after quick workouts or runs), 10 minutes throughout the workday, and 1 hour of yoga per week at home…and it’s just what the doctor ordered (clickables).

from an overload of physical activity without properly stretching.


8 Responses to “Stretch your body, stretch your life”

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  3. Some interesting information,well researched thank you!

    Reply

  4. Good job! I wrote about it before–many others have written it before me, and written it better–know thyself, and to thine own body be true.

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