Many people don’t realise how stretching can not only improve athletic performance, but also how it prevents injury. Take golf for instance – just a little stretching every day can improve your swing, limbering up the muscles required from your shoulders through to your trunk rotation. When biking, too, looser muscles make you more agile on the trails, and let your body absorb the shock of the obstacles. Even in contact sports, stretching allows you to absorb the impact of a hit, preventing injury. With any sport, stretching will also generally improve your efficiency as your muscles will stiffen and seize up less. Plus, you’ll be grateful for the stretch the next morning.

Improved flexibility enhances performance and reduces soreness in the muscles because a more flexible muscle reacts and contracts faster and with more force. This helps improve your range of motion in tennis or golf and helps your agility in skiing or biking. If you are sore after playing the day before, stretching can help. If you stretch immediately after playing, you can reduce that day-after soreness.

Athletes aren’t the only ones who can benefit from stretching. Being more flexible reduces the risk of pulling or tearing muscles. Since poor flexibility can limit your normal joint range of motion, your body can be forced to perform abnormal movement patterns, placing undue force on your joints and muscles and leading to muscle imbalance injuries. Some everyday flexibility related injuries are shoulder tendinitis, low back pain, and tension headaches.

Your stretches should be performed after a 5-10 minute warm up, which can be done on a bike, treadmill or a brisk walk. Each stretch should be held for 15-60 seconds, applying a gradual stretch to each body part and holding the stretch with a steady force. This form of stretching is called static stretching; it is the easiest and one of the safest methods of increasing flexibility.

Remember not to bounce when you stretch. While ballistic stretching (jerking and bouncing stretches) was popular a few decades ago, it is no longer recommended. Not only can the changing force cause injury, static stretching has also proven to be more efficient. Be sure to give careful attention to your form in order to stay within the window of safety and effectiveness.

Effective stretching takes only 5-10 minutes and can be done virtually anywhere. If you have time to play, you have time to stretch. Even before you head out to the court, course, field or trails, remember the importance of stretching all the major muscle groups as part of any sport.

Shaun Karp is a certified personal trainer in Vancouver. For further information call his office at 604-420-7800.