If you suffer from stiff muscles, flexibility exercises may be what you need to help you loosen those muscles and enjoy a nicer range of flexibility. Unlike standard forms of exercises, flexibility exercises are designed to help you lengthen your muscles. Flexibility is often a measure of how tense your muscles are on your bones. The more flexible you are, the looser your muscles are on your body. By using flexibility exercises, you can enhance your flexibility without damaging the muscles. There are several things that you need to keep in mind. Flexibility exercises can be dangerous if you are not careful with how you do them. Due to the fact that your goal is to lengthen and stretch your muscles, incorrectly performing flexibility exercises can cause severe muscle damage. Muscle tearing and strains are commonly injuries to those who are not careful about how they go about their flexibility exercises.

The key aspect of doing flexibility exercises correctly is to never move in jerky, fast motions. Every move you take should be done gradually so you can feel how your body responds to that action. While sore muscles are a necessary part of exercising, there should never be any sharp pains. If your muscles start to hurt, you should ease back and find the right place where your muscles are just beginning to feel the strain and sustain that position. This is a core aspect of flexibility exercises, as it is what encourages your body to allow the muscles to safely lengthen to allow for more flexibility. The changes will be gradual, but over time, your body will respond to the flexibility exercises you are doing and give you the higher level of flexibility you have been after.

Like with other forms of exercise, you should mix your flexibility exercises with other exercises. In order for your new flexibility to not go to waste, you need to have strong muscles to support that. Being more flexible is not a good thing if you are unable to have the strong bones and the muscles to back it. Being flexible can cause injury if you suffer from weak muscles. You need to balance giving yourself more flexibility with pure physical strength. This will ensure that you do not put yourself at unnecessary risk of injury.

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If like me you fall into one of the older age groups you need to take care, because your joints can start to get stiff, you can start to suffer from the beginnings of arthritis, and if these things are left unchecked, it can seriously start to effect your mobility, and therefore your overall quality of life. Last year I was suffering with my sciatic nerve, which appeared as if it was my hip joint, and I was far too heavy for a hip joint replacement, in permanent pain, and quality of life just didn’t exist. Once we realized what the problem was, some simple stretching exercises started to help, and at night sleeping with a pillow between my knees to take the pressure off really helped, and I was soon back to normal. One thing that happened was, it made me realize what we take for granted, being able to walk and climb stairs normally without pain, and generally being able to get around, it really is precious. The fact that these days we are living longer, it is important that we keep ourselves fit, so we can reap the benefits, and to achieve that we need a sensible diet and plenty of exercise.

As we get older there are 12 flexibility exercises which we really need to try and they are: neck stretch, shoulder stretch, shoulder and upper arm raise, upper body stretch, chest stretch, back stretch, ankle stretch, back of leg stretch, thigh stretch, hip stretch, lower back stretch, and finally the calf stretch. If you visit the following site you will get all the information in picture form on how to perform each exercise correctly, plus lots more to help you keep fit, healthy and very active. All the information on the site is totally free and you don’t need to sign up to anything, so make the most of it and stay healthy.       http://nihseniorhealth.gov/exerciseandphysicalactivityexercisestotry/flexibilityexercises/01.html