Stay Flexible and Save Yourself a Lot of Pain

America’s fitness revolution began with an era of aerobics, when legions of runners and walkers laced up athletic shoes to exercise that most important of muscles--the heart. Experts soon recognized that the body’s other muscles deserved equal time, and the “iron age” of strength training began.

Today, aerobic activity and muscle strengthening continue to be encouraged for optimum health. But now that America’s aging baby boomers find themselves grappling with stiffness, muscle aches and joint pains, a once-neglected component of fitness is taking the spotlight.

“Flexibility is a critical factor in achieving peak physical potential and preventing and treating injuries,” says Mari Cyphers, a Northern California physical therapist. “But it is often overlooked or misused.”

Proper stretching is one of the more helpful ways to relieve chronic pain, says Cyphers, who wrote the chapter on flexibility in the American Council on Exercise’s manual for personal trainers. “If you don’t stretch, in a world where most of us sit all day, your muscles get tight, which leads to pain.”

For example, she says, “one of the main causes of back pain is tight hamstrings. Yet most people don’t make the connection between tight muscles in their legs and pain in their back. Even some athletes pay little attention to their flexibility--until they run into trouble.”

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Growing evidence of stretching’s many benefits prompted the American College of Sports Medicine to add recommendations for flexibility exercises to its most recent guidelines for adult fitness. Its experts recommend flexibility exercises that stretch all the major muscle groups, a minimum of two to three days a week, to enhance performance, improve joint range of motion and help prevent injury.

Yoga and tai chi classes, which teach proper stretching techniques, continue to boom at health clubs and exercise studios around the country. And equipment manufacturers are creating devices with names such as Flexmaster and Leg Stretcher designed to help people increase flexibility.

But devices aren’t necessary, says Lawrence Golding, a professor of exercise physiology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “Most people can improve their flexibility vastly with simple stretching exercises,” he says.

Contrary to popular belief, “you don’t have to lose flexibility with age,” says Golding, who has collected data on nearly 1,000 adults who have taken the exercise class he’s taught since 1975 at UNLV. Over time, exercisers in his program showed slight age-related declines in strength and aerobic capacity, but not in flexibility.

“The stiffness many people associate with age actually comes from disuse,” says Golding, who at age 74 can bend over with straight legs and touch both his palms to the floor. “If you stretch regularly, you can keep your flexibility.”

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Stretching is especially important for older adults, he says, because it can help prevent injury and falls, and relieve pain. “If you stumble and you’re flexible,” he notes, “you may be able to catch yourself.”

Stretching also is essential for people who sit all day, says Colorado author Bob Anderson, whose classic book, “Stretching” (Shelter Publications, 1980), has sold more than 2 million copies worldwide. “The biggest promoter of inflexibility is sitting--especially sitting with stress,” he says. Certain exercises, such as running and cycling, also can tighten muscles, notes Anderson, who advises stretching before and after exercise as well as spontaneously during the day.

In our competitive culture, many people have trouble stretching, he says, “because they don’t know how to do things on an easy and moderate level. Stretching should be as relaxed and natural as a yawn.”

Yet some people turn stretching into a contest. “They see the next guy touch his toes so they figure that’s what they’ve got to do,” Anderson says. “But stretching is not a race; it’s a very individual matter. It’s important to just be where you are and to stretch by a feeling, not by some predetermined idea that you’ve got to touch your head to your knee.”

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Although there is some difference of opinion on the various methods of flexibility training, most experts agree on these guidelines:

* Stretch before exercise. Warm up first with light movements, such as walking, then stretch gently to prepare for activity. Use rhythmic, easy motions that suit the activity you’ll be doing, such as light golf swings or arm circles.

* Stretch after exercise, when your muscles are warm and more receptive to deeper stretching. Focus on the muscle you are stretching, and move your body until you feel a mild tension in that muscle. If you feel pain, you’ve stretched too far; back off. Breathe slowly and rhythmically while holding the stretch for at least 10 to 30 seconds, then release.

* Don’t bounce, hold your breath, strain or push a muscle too far.

* Consider stretching gently while soaking in a hot tub, after a shower or whenever you get up from sitting or lying down.

* Stretch daily. If time is limited, stretching all the major muscle groups (neck, shoulders, arms, chest, back, hips, groin, legs) two to three times a week will also provide significant benefits. At the very least, stretch for five minutes after each exercise session.

Physical therapist Cyphers offers this easy stretch for the hamstrings: Lie on the floor by a doorway with one leg up on the wall and the other leg through the doorway. Scoot your buttocks toward the wall until you feel a stretch in the back of your thigh. As your leg muscles relax, scoot closer to the wall.

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For more information about stretching, visit the Web site of the American Running Assn.: https://www.americanrunning.org.