Fit and Healthy Now

How Dynamic Flexibility Exercises Increases your range of motion Faster

Stretching has come a long way since the olden days of just stretching statically or shall we say holding a stretch for 30 seconds to a minute three times on each body part and then doing your training session. In fact is almost the opposite. The latest school of thought in stretching and flexibility is what is known as dynamic flexibility exercise also known as active warm up.

Dynamic flexibility exercises involve moving a body part with increasing range of movement, combining both speed and maximum range. Examples of dynamic flexibility exercises are; Leg swing to the front and back, leg swings to each side, arm swings front and back, even simple hips circles is a form of dynamic flexibility.

Why dynamic flexibility over traditional static stretching before a work out or exercise? The rational comes basically from the theory that in dynamic flexibility exercises you are actually priming your major muscles into movements that are going to go to and beyond the normal range that you would when exercises. This actively prepares your muscle and tendons for the range of movement that the body will experience.

With static stretching you actually cause minute microscopic tears in the muscle when you stretch them. It is difficult to take the stretch past or equivalent to what you will experience in exercise, especially explosive fast sports such as sprinting and jumping. It can therefore actually cause injury and dehydration from sweating. That’s the basics. Where traditional stretching has a real purpose is after the activity where it can drastically improve recovery times and improve overall flexibility. Post exercise is best stretch for a minimum of 30 seconds for three sets.

Dynamic flexibility exercises are now becoming the norm in warming up for strenuous activity. You can actually check with your own body when performing dynamic flexibility exercises to see the readiness of your muscles to perform the activity. If you are struggling to stretch to a given range whilst performing dynamic flexibility exercises, you can keep warming up and coming back to the at muscle group once the internal core temperature is raised sufficiently.

This will give you ongoing feedback to see if you are prepared for exercise. As a rule of thumb if a muscle won’t stretch easily first time round move on to another body part and then come back. Since moving to dynamic flexibility exercises some 10 years ago I have never looked back, I have improved my workouts cut my warm up time in half and prevented many injuries especially hamstring ones! Use dynamic flexibility exercises in your warm up for improved work outs and less injury

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