Stretching - The truth: Here’s how to get out of bed feeling great

Thursday, October 2nd, 2008 at 2:55 pm

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Did you see what I did there? A bit of a pun and the only reason I am able to be witty at this time of the day is as a result of a good stretch

Stretching is central to all forms of exercise, one must stretch before and after any exercise

Stretching increases your flexibility

Regular stretching assists not only in increasing your range of motion, but also helps make you more flexible. This is a great benefit to those suffering from joint pain caused by arthritis or osteoporosis

An ability to stretch the limbs will help ease some of the pain by lessening the stiffness in the joints

Stretching lets your body know that you are going to engage in vigourous exercise and helps it prepare for the coming activity

Stretch every morning before you get out of bed

Raise your arms above your head and take a deep breath in. As you exhale gently, try to extend your arms as high as possible, by interlacing your fingers and pushing your hands, palms up, to the ceiling.

Do this three times with three deep breaths

Then sit up nice and straight and make sure that you are at a ninety degree angle to the bed with straight legs and back. Extend your legs so that they are as far apart as possible in shape of a V and point your toes. Take a deep breath in and as you breathe out gently, lean forward with your arms extended above your head. Try and place your forehead flat on the bed with your arms still extended. Repeat three times

Don’t worry, this will take a bit of practice, getting your forehead flat on the bed first time isn’t normal!

Then bend one of your legs at a right angle to your other, so that you look as if you are a ballerina balancing on one toe (except sitting down). Again, take a deep breath in and extend your upper body over your leg, do this three times on both sides.

By now you should be relatively awake and ready to do the last couple of stretches to really get your day off to a good start

Get out of bed and stand up nice and straight on the balls of your feet. Take a moment to check that you are perfectly balanced. You can do this by ensuring that your feet are shoulder width apart and rocking gently back and forth a couple of times until you come to your natural centre.

Take a deep breath in and then slowly exhale. As you breathe out, stand on your tip toes and stretch yourself as high as you can go. Breathing in, come down gently to rest on the ground again. Repeat this five times, trying to stretch a little bit further everytime.

For extra impact you can raise your arms and your head as you go up on your tip toes. This will give you extra extension

Lastly, let’s give the neck and back a bit of a tweak

Standing up straight and still again, make sure that you have found your centre of gravity. Take a deep breath in and then again slowly, slowly exhale. Let your head drop forward slowly nice and relaxed. Then curl your neck, vertebra by vertebra until you are bent all the way over with your hands on the floor.

This should take the form of a natural curling motion and as much as possible try to do it breathing out, it will take some practice to get this right. When you are ready, take another deep breath in and as you exhale, start to uncurl yourself slowly all the way up from the floor. Concentrate on feeling your back lengthen as you pull each vertebra straight.

Repeat this three times

You should physically feel as if your back has lengthened a bit during the course of this exercise

It is likely that your heart rate will be up a bit as well as your temperature. This is a good sign, it means that you have got the blood circulating and are ready to face the day

We want to do a series of these stretches and it would be great to target it to specific areas such as back and shoulders, torso and other areas of concern. Reader feedback would be a great way of getting this to be the most relevant to your needs, so drop me a line

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