Ok so my good intentions of blogging every couple of days have already been hindered by Wimbledon, the good weather, reading my new book and my only legitimate excuse - a visit from my Mum.
I had planned a nice long blog when I got back from the sports stretching course I went on in Brighton but as I say have had a bit of a dip in self discipline! Regular stretching is one of the best things you can do to keep yourself in good shape, its great for injury prevention and recovery from chronic pain. Problem is it takes a lot of self discipline to do it regularly and its hard to motivate yourself. When you're not in pain it doesn't always cross your mind to do anything preventative.
I've always used stretches in my treatments but probably not as much as I could so it was great to review the different techniques. Muscle tissue is elastic so in theory will return to its optimum length after being shortened or lengthened. However, this doesn't always happen - the more a muscle and its surrounding soft tissue is held in one position the more likely it is to stay in an overstretched or shortened state. A classic example of this rounded shoulders - working at a key board or driving all day with your arms out in front of you shortens the tissue on the front of the chest and lengthens the tissue on the upper back. This effects the position of the shoulder blades and can cause various pain patterns. So stretching helps to retune everything and remind it where it should be.
Having every muscle group stretched over 3 days was great - you don't always realise how stiff you are until someone grabs hold of a bit of you! Particularly the muscles in my buttocks!! I will keep posting stretches on facebook and will post some stretching routines here on the blog - so stay tuned.
So blog number 2 is complete and I can relax and go back to my book and look forward to Take That on Friday.
Roast chicken for dinner - yum
Alice x
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