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First thing in the morning, waking up tight, sore, tired, wondering what the heck did I do last night? We’ve all been there. Finish a big workout, a super athletic day, struggling to recover? Yep, been there too! The answer usually to your woes, is stretching! But how do you stretch? How often should you be stretching? Why should you even stretch to begin with? Well lets take a look at a few things!

Let’s start with what is stretching. In short, it’s putting the body into a position that intentionally lengthens a specific muscle, or tendon. Stretching is important to not only maintain but improve the mobility of the muscles and tendons in the body, keeping your mobility up and improving overall wellness! Being more flexible is also incredibly valuable for injury prevention. Being more mobile, allows your body to flex and move into more positions more easily, helping preventing injury during activity.

Okay so now we know what it is, so how often should you be stretching? Well the American College of Sports Medicine recommends stretching 2 to 3 times per week is a great place to start. But you can over stretch, especially in the beginning when you are just starting to build up flexibility in the muscles. Keeping an early stretching routine to 5-10min per day, 2-3 times per week is a great start. As you add flexibility, you can stretch longer, and more times per week. Just be careful to not over do it. Over stretching can lead to joints becoming too loose and cause other injuries all together!

Okay so you’ve got your routine, you know you should be stretching. Now how the heck do we stretch? We have all done the typical lying in bed, stretch when we wake up thing. Thats a start, or the basic touch your toes deal. These are all great building blocks! There are also awesome apps, and websites that have incredible stretching routines. Things like yoga have also become increasingly popular to build a solid guided stretch routine! There are also tools you can use to help increase your options for stretching. We will list a couple of our favorites below:

Foot And Loop Stretching Strap

Hamstring Stretching Device

Psoas Release Tool (GREAT device for releasing Hip Flexors)

Upper Body Yoga Stretching Stick

Whether it’s touching your toes every morning, or going all in and building a bulletproof stretching routine, adding flexibility to your health and wellness routine is essential for total body optimization! Let us know what stretching tips and tricks you have!