When watching televised professional or Olympic athletes, you’ll see them stretching before their events—be it football, basketball, track, gymnastics, or whatever. What you don’t often see are amateur, weekend athletes engaging in pre-workout stretching.

“For any amateur or professional athlete, proper stretching before and after strenuous exercise is important—even if you wouldn’t call yourself an “athlete.” “

What stretching can do:

1. Increases range of motion while decreasing muscle stiffness.
   It slows the degradation of your joints as we age. Yes, we’re all aging.
2. Reduces injury risks.
   Flexible muscles are much less likely to become injured when making sudden moves like jumping. By increasing the range of motion for muscle groups through stretching, the strain on your body’s muscles during various activities can be reduced.
3. Helps relieve post-exercise aches and pains.
   After strenuous workouts, stretching your muscles keeps them loose and lessens the shortening and tightening effect that results in post-workout aches and pains.
4. Improves posture.
   Stretching the muscles of the legs, lower back, chest, and shoulders keeps your back in better alignment and improves your posture.
5. Helps to reduce stress and increases stress management.
   Regular muscle stretching relieves tension and reduces stress.
6. Improves muscular relaxation and reduces muscular tension.
   Continuously tensed muscles inhibit proper blood circulation to the muscles. This deprivation of oxygen and essential nutrients creates even tenser muscles. Stretching relaxes your muscles.
7. Improves overall muscle functionality and mechanics.
   Flexible joints require less energy to perform a wider range of motion. Improved flexibility improves overall performance by creating more energy-efficient movements.
8. Prepares the body for the stress of exercise.
   Loosening up muscles while preparing to exercise improves your ability to withstand the impact of exercises such as running, tennis, soccer, or even heavy weight training.
9. Increases blood circulation.
   Stretching increases blood supply to your muscles and joints, which allows for greater nutrient transportation and improves the circulation of blood through your entire body.
10. Decreases the risk of low-back pain.
    Flexibility of hamstrings, hip flexors, and muscles attached to the pelvis relieves stress on the lumbar spine and all benefit from stretching. This, in turn, reduces your risk of low-back pain.

How Muscle D Fitness Helps

Muscle D Fitness simplifies stretching techniques with its new Super Stretch Machine. Hard-to-miss placards affixed to each machine illustrate different stretches.

Want to see a user video presentation of the many techniques? Scan the QR code with your smart phone and try out the machine yourself.