What are the Benefits of Stretching Before Exercising?

If you've ever bought an exercise tape or DVD, or started a new exercise program at your local gym, or have taken a yoga, dance or aerobics class, chances are you've been told that you should always stretch your muscles before beginning.

And you should be. Stretching - or warming up your muscles helps to prevent injuries, and promotes better results from the physical activities you'll be doing.

Most people even admit that they know that stretching is important, even if they don’t understand exactly. (And according to recent studies, almost 45% of people who say they exercise regularly, also admitted that they DON'T always stretch first!) Understanding what happens during stretching will help you to understand why you need to do it.

The Science Behind Stretching

According to Yahoo Fitness, flexibility is one of the key components of a balanced fitness program. Without flexibility training (stretching), you are missing an important part of overall health. Flexibility prevents injury, increases your range of motion, promotes relaxation, improves performance and posture, reduces stress and keeps your body feeling loose and agile.

When you stretch your muscles, you lengthen some of the muscle fibers, while others remain at rest, which puts a little force or resistance on the collagen fibers inside the connective tissues - it's this force that causes any damaged or misaligned fibers to realign themselves along the same lines as the tension - and actually helps to repair and rehabilitate damaged tissues. (That's why range of motion exercises and resistance exercises used in physical therapy can actually help you to recover from an injury. The reason that you should be stretching your muscles before you begin exercising is because when your body is at rest the muscles are at rest - or "cold." The longer the muscles are at rest, the tighter and shorter they are. Stretching first lengthens your muscles, gets them "warmed up" which prevents injury and increases your full range of motion and flexibility.

So repeat after me..."I will stretch first, I will stretch first..."