Flexible Routine : The right kind of stretching reduces stress, promotes circulation and increases overall performance of everyday activities, experts say.

For many people, flexibility is the last thing they’re concerned with when deciding to get fit. But experts say flexibility, a muscle’s ability to stretch to its greatest length, is one of the most easily attainable, least expensive and most important parts of any fitness program.

“Flexibility isn’t primary in most people’s minds,” said Anthony Barnes, fitness supervisor at the Sports Connection in Costa Mesa. “They think it’s boring and a waste of time when in actuality it’s one of the most beneficial things people can do.”

Good flexibility benefits health and fitness by reducing stress, improving posture, reducing risk of back problems, promoting circulation, mitigating post-exercise soreness and increasing overall performance when doing important everyday activities, fitness experts say.

“The larger the range of motion, the more work can be done in everything you do. You’ll not only move easier, lift more and carry yourself better, you’ll do everything with a lot more ease of movement,” said Barnes.

Michael O’Shea, director and founder of the New York-based Sports Training Institute with a facility in Irvine, said there are three components to designing any fitness or training program: strength, aerobics and flexibility.

“The easiest thing to attack is stretching,” he said. “You don’t need an expensive home gym and a Stairmaster and there’s no secret formula, no bee pollen. All you need is a mat and a mirror.

“Stretching goes hand in hand with the people who are now walking instead of running,” he said. “You’re not in a full-blown sweaty exhausted state, but you feel better and you’re moving in the right direction.”

In addition to increasing fitness, stretching feels good, he said.

“It loosens you up and you feel so much better,” said O’Shea. “It has a lot of regenerative ability to get the kinks out. When you sit over a desk all day, you really need it.”

O’Shea, a former National Hockey League and National Basketball Assn. team doctor who holds a doctorate in sports medicine, said differences in people’s degree of flexibility are partially related to genetic factors, with bone structure, amount of fat, ligaments and tendons all playing roles in how tight or loose a person is. Other factors are the amount of activity, age and sex, he said, with younger, active females generally being the most flexible.

“When looking at the three components of fitness--strength, aerobics and flexibility--women always test third on strength and men test third on flexibility,” said O’Shea. “What’s important for everyone is to address their weakest links. If you neglect flexibility in fitness, the other two areas will suffer, especially as you get better. You tend to break down when you haven’t done your flexibility homework.”

O’Shea said one reason women are more flexible than men is that stretching historically was regarded as the feminine side of exercise and strength was seen as the male side. Therefore, females have stretched more and longer than males have.

“You drop an average woman or an average man in the gym, and they’ll tend to go in the direction of what they do best because they want to look good,” said O’Shea. “Men will go and bench press, and women will go to yoga class. But in the past 10 years, people have seen they need balance, and now more men stretch and more women lift weights.”

Unlike other fitness areas that are easy to measure, such as body fat and maximum oxygen uptake, flexibility is relatively difficult to assess, professionals say. Just because someone can touch his toes doesn’t mean he is flexible in other areas.

To measure flexibility, most gyms use the sit-and-reach test, a method whereby a person sits on the floor with legs extended and reaches over a box on which sits a ruler.

“This is the industry’s standard test because it’s so easy to do,” said O’Shea. “But it’s not ideal. One of the biggest complaints about it is that so many muscles are involved. You really want to stretch the muscles individually.”

O’Shea’s Orange County sports clinic, which is housed in the Irvine Sports Club, uses seven different tests to measure flexibility in calves, thighs, buttocks and hips. The tests are administered by physical therapists.

A simple test of inherent flexibility that anyone can do, said O’Shea, is to hold your left arm out with your palm up, bend your left wrist toward you. With your right hand, push your left thumb toward your wrist. If the distance between your thumb and your wrist is less than an inch, you’re naturally very flexible. If it’s more than three inches, you’re naturally very tight.

“It’s a little meaningless,” he said. “But you can still get a sense of inherent looseness or tightness.”

No matter how tight you are, you can improve dramatically, with increases from 20% to 200%, depending on how flexible you are when you started, he added.

“It’s a pure linear graph,” said O’Shea. “The more time you spend on the graph, the more flexible you’ll be. I have a fellow who when he started out couldn’t stretch (his arms) past his knees. Now he can stand on a 12-inch block and palm the floor.”

For the average person who simply wants to improve overall flexibility, O’Shea recommends 15 to 30 minutes of stretching the back, hamstrings and shoulders five or six days a week. For those working a fitness program such as weightlifting and aerobics, he stresses the importance of stretching before and after the activity. And for those engaged in specific sports such as skiing or biking, activity-specific stretches should be incorporated into the training program.

For everyone, O’Shea recommends a book called “Stretching” by Bob Anderson (Shelter Publications, Inc., $7.95). The soft-cover manual pictures stretching programs for everyday use in addition to programs for running, tennis, racquetball, cycling, swimming, golf and other sports.

“You can get a private trainer to stretch you or take a yoga class,” said O’Shea. “But a lot of it you can do on your own.”

How you stretch is also important, experts say. Ballistic stretching, or stretching with bouncing, is now considered unsafe. The preferred method is static stretching, or the sustained holding of a stretch to the point of tightness for 10 to 30 seconds.

“People still think if it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t do anything for you,” said Barnes. “There’s good hurt and bad hurt, and hurt in stretching is not what we’re after. Listen to your body.”

Although fitness professionals say recent studies on whether or not flexibility actually reduces sports injuries are divided, most agree that stretching does help.

“I know if I don’t stretch my Achilles’ (tendons) after I run, they let me know the next day,” said Barnes. “We all know that if we don’t stretch, not only are we more uncomfortable and tighter, it leads to increased tension and increased stress. If that increased tension and increased stress can cause injury, which I believe it does, then yes, stretching does prevent injury.”

Janice Plastino, UCI dance professor, said people in dance believe that there may be actual changes in the skeletal structure due to dancing very early in life.

“Obviously, everybody doesn’t have to be as flexible as dancers,” she said. “But flexibility, like strength and endurance or anything else, is a learned phenomenon and important for everyone, particularly those with back problems. If you don’t do it, you will get tighter over time, especially if you run and play sports. And when you stop, you go back to where you were in the first place.”

Some activities, said Plastino, such as swimming and T’ai Chi, promote flexibility on their own. But most types of exercise tend to limit flexibility in certain areas of body and if you continue to exercise without stretching the muscles you’re strengthening, they become tighter, she said.

Plastino, who heads the only dance science center in the United States, recommends that everyone warm up before stretching with movements such as reaching and fast walking.

“Runners often stretch first,” she said. “(Dancers) don’t. We warm up with big movements until the core temperature of the body is heated up. I recommend that for all people because the chances of tearing a muscle when cold is very strong. The key thing is to get a light sweat before stretching.”

While stretching doesn’t result in weight loss, it does improve muscle tone, Plastino said.

“You need to get your heart rate up to lose weight,” she said. “But any time you work a muscle, whether you stretch it for length or contract it for strength, it’s going to be better than it was.”

Said Barnes: “Usually when people think of tone, they think of reducing body fat around muscle tissue. But stretching helps tone in that it elongates the muscle, thereby making it look nice and very sleek.”

Consistency is the core of flexibility training, experts say.

“The best way to get flexible is not the way you choose to do it,” said Barnes. “It’s to do it and be consistent. Nothing will be the best way unless it’s a pattern.”

And most important of all is to have a balanced program that addresses all facets of fitness.

“Getting fit isn’t just lifting weights, running or getting in the lotus position,” said O’Shea. “It’s all three.”