How to Get Flexible, Easy Exercises for You

One of the rewards of getting old, if you can call it that, is getting stiffness in your limbs or losing flexibility in your body.

You really notice this when you try to run up the stairs or if you’ve been asked to bend down and touch your toes. The latter exercise really hurts.

Body flexibility relates to the the range of movement in your joints. The degree of flexibility differs for each individual. But the degree of body flexibility can be improved by doing some simple stretching exercises.

This is one area of exercise I’ve never taken seriously. I’ll go the garage and use the bench press straightaway, or just jump on my bike and pedal of the train station without giving a second thought slow down and perform a few stretching exercise first.

When you think, a few stretching exercises isn’t that onerous if they are the only exercises we do in our struggle to stay or get fit.

Keeping our bodies flexible is important as a lack of flexibility can trigger physical symptoms such as pain syndrome or balance problems.

You can measure how flexible your body is by doing a Sit and Reach test. This will test flexibility of your lower back.

You do the test by sitting on the floor with both legs outstretched and parallel to the floor. Both feet point upwards with the heel on the ground.

With arms outstretched parallel to your legs, the aim is to see how far you can lean forward so that your hands outstretched are at the same point as your toes.

If you can lean forward so your hands are at the same point as your toes, that’s a zero reading. If you can lean forward so your hands go beyond your toes, that’s a positive reading, if you struggle to get anywhere near your toes that’s a negative reading. You want to aim for a zero or positive reading.

While you can do the Sit and Reach test at home, your local gym should have a Sit and Reach box so the measurements will be a little more formal.

get more flexible If you’re like me you’ll be in the negative zone. Try out some simple exercises where you stretch your arms above your head, touch your toes; while standing rotate each arm in big circles, imagine your drawing the biggest circle you can; finally stretch your neck from side to side and forward and backwards several times.

These simple exercises will improve your flexibility and may go some way to delaying onset of symptoms resulting from lack of flexibility in our bodies.