As you start to age, the muscles of your body will automatically lose its size and strength. So, it becomes less stiffer and supple. Now such will affect wide range of movements of the joints and at times will lead to the stiffness of the joints and muscles. The loss of the tissue elasticity is the major reason on why the joints and muscles gets tighten up.
Most health experts feel that one of the major reasons on why the muscles simply lose their natural suppleness and the flexibility and even become prone to aches, tears, and pain is being inactive. Now what happens is that if the situation is not remedied correctly on time, then the loss of flexibility can lead to a huge amount of change (permanent) in the normal muscle functions and posture.
This is why it is quite important to maintain the flexibility of the muscles with regard to the overall health fitness.
What Is Flexibility?
The ability of your body parts and joints to be able to do the entire range of motions is termed as flexibility. You need flexibility in all your day-to-day activities like walking, lifting, bending and more. The most important aspect of being flexible is that it helps to allow your muscles to be mobile. But like most of the things, flexibility can decrease with age and it is necessary to add the flexibility exercises into your daily workout regime.
Advantages Of Flexibility
Basically, there are various ways for testing the flexibility. The most common means (which is by fitness experts) is to see if you can touch your toes while standing up using both your legs straight. There are other exercises which you can see online to know more.
If there is certain stiffness, then it means you lack flexibility and suffer from bad posture. At times you would need to increase the flexibility so that you can improve your normal exercise routine. In such cases you need to know flexibility training. Weight training and aerobic exercises contains jerky and rapid movements which will lead to muscle fatigue and joint pain. However, yoga, stretching exercises, Pilates, and more contain gradual movements which can easily assist in getting greater flexibility.
One of the best methods of maintaining flexibility is to stretch regularly. Irrespective of your age, you need to incorporate stretching at least once each day. Even though it might not be a part of your exercise regime, still there are many kinds of simple and easy to do stretching exercises which you can do at your desk or in front of the TV.
If the time is short, you can simply focus on stretches that are apt for larger muscles like hamstrings, shoulder, lower back, hips and calf muscles. These are the major areas which are quite prone to soreness and stiffness as one gets older. And you have to be careful in not overdoing them.
Frankly, you can incorporate the flexibility exercise in your normal exercises like resistance training, cardiovascular training exercises, and more.
