Top 5 Flexibility Exercises To Improve Your Strength

Have you ever wondered how flexibility exercises can help you improve your daily activities, functioning, and performance in general? The importance of body flexibility is best put in Joseph Pilates’ words: You are only as young as your spine is flexible.”

The human body requires flexibility to complete a full range of motion using our joints and limbs. Our body loses this flexibility with time, but with specific exercises, you can regain it.

Body flexibility improves through stretching, which might seem boring to cardiovascular or HIIT (high-intensity interval training) lovers, but its benefits are abundant. Flexibility exercises are a crucial part of a well-rounded fitness regimen as it reduces the tightness of muscles that gives you a more efficient and safe work out time.

Even if you have avoided this crucial part of your everyday routine, no worries, it’s never too late to start. The beginning may be tedious and the hardest, but you will feel it’s satisfying results gradually. Before we move forward describing the stretching exercises, let us give brief you on the benefits of a flexible body:

• Flexibility reduces muscle tightness and makes them stronger to bear more physical stress while strength training and HIIT. This way, the risks of getting hurt in different physical activities reduce.
• Flexibility exercises relax and loosen body muscles, making you less susceptible to pains and aches and fever muscle cramps.
• Muscles’ flexibility improves posture.
• Flexibility helps our body muscles to be healthy and stable to sustain strains and will support body movements.
• Improved flexibility improves physical performance and motion.

Type of Stretching Exercises To Improve Flexibility

Hamstring Stretch (Standing)

To practice this stretching exercise:

• Stand tall with a little gap between feet.
• Lower your body down towards the floor slowly.
• Exhale while coming down, bend the knees slightly and place the hands beneath the calves keeping the arms straight.
• Hold the position for 45 seconds to 3 minutes.
• After completing the set, bend the knees to roll up.
• You will feel the stretch on your calves. Increase the hold time gradually as per your endurance level.

Lunge and Twist

One of the higher core engaging exercises is a lunge with a twist and to perform this:

• Stand tall with your feet together on the floor, or mat for better grip.
• Take your right foot forward and bend it forward.
• Make sure to keep the other leg straight backwards. Maintain a lunge position by holding the left leg in a straight line behind your toes on the ground.
• Place the left hand on the mat and twist the upper body to the right and extend the ceiling’s right arm.
• Hold the position. Stay still holding this position for at least 30 seconds to 1 or 2 minutes depending on your endurance level. After completing the set, switch legs and repeat the same for the other leg.

Piriformis Stretch

To Practice This Stretch, Start With:

• Sit and extend your legs in front.
• Cross the legs over the other, for example, right leg over the left and place the other foot straight on the floor.
• If you cross your right leg over the left, the right hand on the mat behind the back and left hand on the crossed knee.
• When you are ready to twist the body in the opposite direction in a Russian twist pattern.
• If the spinal twisting seems challenging to do, try to stretch as much as you can, and with time, you will feel it less complicated.

Triceps Stretch

Perform This Exercise With:

• Sit or stand tall and keep your feet and hip-width apart.
• Extend your arms overhead, bend the right elbow, take your left hand’s support on it, and try to reach the top middle of your back.
• Stretch the right arm as much as possible and then take it back to its normal position and repeat the same exercise for the other arm this time.

Figure Four Stretch

• Lie on the mat on your back and keep the feet flat on the mat.
• Cross your right foot over the left quad, grab onto the end of the right leg firmly and lift the right leg off the ground gently and pull it towards the chest.
• Get to a comfortable stretch and hold the position for 30 seconds to 2 minutes.
• Once done switch the sides to repeat the same for the other leg.