Learning challenge s23w6: "I Love My Body /Static/Dynamic Stretches

Hello my wonderful students, on behalf of my teammate and I, I say a big congratulations 🎉 🎉 🎉 🎉 to each and everyone that has persevered since the first week of this season till this last week! Wether you have been making entry or not, so long as you have been consistently following our training, you have won the race for loving your body. It's not easy. I must admit that you all did marvelously well. It's not about being selected for weekly support, but about loving your body, about keeping on moving despite the pains and the difficulties you all encountered. We truly appreciate you all. But don't stop here, keep moving. Each week, we will keep dropping programs for you to follow in this community. Be consistent, don't quit because of support.

Week 6

Welcome to week 6 and the final week in this season! This week is going to take another dimension. Since from week one, we have been presenting different exercise programs that targeted different body parts and different muscle groups. Now, it is time to delve into a very important aspect of exercise that can help you enjoy your programs without problems and that is stretches. Yes, this is very important that we recognise and practice them before and after each exercise day.

Most people tend to neglect this stretches and they suffer the consequences. As our dear students, it is good you master stretches and never let it go. But what exactly is stretch? What are the types and the areas it is targeted? What are the benefits?

Stretches

Muscle stretching is a type of exercise to condition the muscles before physical activity and relax them after it. This is to say that stretches are done both before and after exercises

stretches grouped according to period

There are several types of stretches, but the most commonly used are static stretches and dynamic stretches.

Static stretches

As the name suggests, it is performed by stretching the muscle without movement, maintaining a posture for a few seconds, its duration ranges from a minimum of 10 seconds to a maximum of 20. This, when carrying out this form of stretches, you are not going to move the body after assuming the position but remain that way until the said number of minutes is over. These type of stretches are best done after each exercise period.

Dynamic stretches

They are performed with gentle movements in each muscle group and their execution should not exceed 20 seconds per exercise. These ones are done mostly before exercise begins. They should always be the first things to do once you are ready to exercise because they help to activate the muscles or to send messages to the parts of the body that an exercise is about to begin.

The stretches are performed full-body, starting from the feet to the head or vice versa, covering each area of the body, since in any physical activity we involve the whole body.

Goal of Stretches

The main goal is to condition the body before an intense activity and after the activity relax them to decrease the pains of intense activity.

Benefits

• Reduce the risk of injury, as we are conditioning the body for a greater effort.

• It allows us greater and better mobility

• It promotes better circulation.

• Reduces post-exercise muscle soreness.

stretches grouped according to the target areas

Stretches are also grouped according to the area of the body we are targeting or according to the muscle groups. Below are some of them

Feet

While standing, we take one foot off the ground, while we lean on the other, and make movements up and down, then from right to left, at the end we change feet and do the same.

Legs

We rest the arms on a fixed surface, leave one leg in front, bending the knee at a 90-degree angle and the other leg we stretch it to its full extent backwards, hold the posture for 10 to 20 seconds and then repeat with the other leg.

Twins

We look for a low step and stand on the edge, leaving half of the foot on the concrete and the heel part in the air, now we lower the heels without touching the ground and go back up maintaining balance.

Torso

Standing with the legs a little more than hip width apart, hands on the waist, now we turn to one side holding the posture for 10 to 20 seconds and then turn to the other side.

Back -hip

In the previous starting position, we bend the torso to the front and lower as much as we can, making the attempt to touch the feet, if possible we hold the ankles to stretch better, maintain the posture and then slowly rise and stretch the torso back as much as possible, maintaining posture and balance.

Shoulders

We put our hands on our shoulders and make backward and forward circles.

Arms

We bend the arm back above the head and with the other hand we touch the elbow trying to stretch the arm as far back as possible, we hold the tension for 10 to 20 seconds and then we do it with the other arm.

Neck -head

We bring the chin to the chest and then we go up and bring the head back, then we turn to the right and then to the left, with gentle movements

Note that the goal and the benefits are the same with the first grouping.

Below are 3 different videos that demonstrate some stretch moves for the purpose of this lesson. There are still others but we just want to limit ourselves to these ones at the moment. Carefully watch them and learn.