Another general rule is to never stretch an area that’s cold. Before stretching, you need to warm up and get your blood flowing. The body contains miles of tiny arteries, most of which stay closed unless you have moved enough to open them up and fill them with blood. After just a few minutes of movement, these baby blood vessels will open. The muscles they bring blood to grow warm and loosen up, allowing all that water you’re drinking to get into the fascia. That’s why the best time to stretch is after a workout, when all these arteries are open. Be sure to warm up the specific part of the body you plan to stretch.
If you don’t do regular workouts, just do some very simple movements:
> Windmill your arms.
> Rotate your torso.
> Do neck rolls.
> Touch your toes (bending
forward as far as you can comfortably).
> Make circles with your knees.
> Jog slowly in place for
thirty seconds. (If you can’t jog, hold on to a chair and march in place.)
> Do calf raises. (Holding
onto a chair, come up onto the balls of your feet and then lower your heels
slowly to the floor.)
All you need are 10 to 15 rhythmic repetitions on each
side, just to loosen yourself up—a total of two minutes of nonstop movement.
The key is that you must sweat slightly. If you don’t break a sweat, you’re
not warmed up enough, and you need to repeat a couple of the warm-up movements
for
an extra minute or so.
Timing the Stretches
You don’t need to hold fascial stretches for
an uninterrupted sixty-secondperiod. For most people, this would be quite
difficult. So you break each fascial stretch into two sections, with a rest in
between. After the rest, in the second part of the stretch, you can go farther.
Here’s the basic timing for all but two of the stretches:
> Hold for twenty seconds.
> Rest for ten seconds.
> Hold for thirty seconds.
The first twenty seconds is essentially a
warm-up for the following thirty-second hold. Most people need five to ten
seconds just to get into position, so don’t worry if the first hold doesn’t
seem to be doing much. On the second hold, you’ll get into position much
faster, and—here’s the key—you should make a greater effort. The thirty-second
hold does the majority of the work. During this part, strive for an additional
5 percent of stretch beyond what you got in the first part. This requires a
mental focus on expecting and working toward that small extra increment of
movement. Even after you’ve stretched as much as you can, you can always go
another 1 percent—so strive for that as well. If you don’t challenge yourself
to your end point, you won’t get the full benefit. Keep
asking, is it still releasing? Just remember
you are listening to your body, not trying
to force it. When it says no, that’s where you must stop.
At the beginning, put a clock with a second hand in front
of you to time your stretch-rest-stretch intervals. After a while, you won’t
need it because you’ll know how long twenty seconds is. Besides, with the
fascial stretches, these time periods are basically just guidelines. The actual
time you need depends on how well hydrated you are and the amount of injury and
scarring in the part of the body you’re stretching. If your fascia is
unhealthy, you need a longer hold to stretch it enough to get a good release.
As you come to understand how the stretches work, you might decide to add a few
extra seconds to your hold time, but always remember to be gentle and not
force your tissue beyond that sense of slight discomfort. As your fascia
gets healthier, your hold times can be shorter. You’ll be able to get into position
immediately, so you can hold a few seconds less.
As you hold, there will be a moment when you suddenly
feel the muscle fibers separating as the muscle opens and releases. When this
happens, hold right there as long as you still feel this opening—being gentle
yet firm at the same time. When the sensation of opening stops, let go. The
optimal timing is slightly different for everyone. Once again, you must listen
to your body—it will tell you. You might hold for thirty seconds, twenty-eight,
or forty. What’s important is to consciously use the second hold period for the
main therapeutic work.
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