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Almost everybody knows the importance of stretching. Unfortunately, few people know how to do it properly.\u00a0 Specifically, how long should you hold a stretch for?\u00a0 The answer is that it depends on why you\u2019re stretching. Here are two stretching rules to keep in mind.<\/p>\n
Rule One \u2013 Stretching Before A Workout<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s highly recommended to give your body a warmup before engaging in strenuous activity of any sort.\u00a0 In this case, you\u2019re limbering up your muscles, not trying to improve long-term flexibility.\u00a0 Given that, relatively short stretches are superior.\u00a0 Don\u2019t hold any given stretch position for more than twenty seconds.\u00a0 That\u2019s enough to bring your muscles to attention without overdoing it.<\/p>\n Rule Two \u2013 Stretching To Improve Flexibility<\/strong><\/p>\n The other common reason people do stretching exercises is in a bid to improve their flexibility over the long term.\u00a0 Here, short duration stretches don\u2019t really offer you much in the way of a benefit.\u00a0 Ideally, for this purpose, you\u2019ll want to hold your stretch for as long as a minute or two. Although if that\u2019s impractical, try to maintain the stretch position for at least thirty seconds. Done consistently and over a period of time, this will vastly improve your body\u2019s flexibility.<\/p>\n The bottom line then, is that you need to tailor the stretching you\u2019re doing to the task at hand.\u00a0 There\u2019s not a one size fits all solution and engaging in the wrong type of stretching will either not see you gain much benefit in the best case. In the worst case, it could significantly hamper your performance and increase your risk of injury.<\/p>\n Whatever type of stretching you engage in, it\u2019s always important to be mindful of your body and the signals it\u2019s sending you.\u00a0 A bit of discomfort while stretching is to be expected.\u00a0 If that turns to outright pain, ease off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Almost everybody knows the importance of stretching. Unfortunately, few people know how to do it properly.\u00a0 Specifically, how long should you hold a stretch for?\u00a0 The answer is that it …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radianthealth.us\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radianthealth.us\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radianthealth.us\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radianthealth.us\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radianthealth.us\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3382"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radianthealth.us\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3384,"href":"https:\/\/radianthealth.us\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3382\/revisions\/3384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radianthealth.us\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radianthealth.us\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radianthealth.us\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}