Why Staying Flexible is Important

As we age most of us lose muscle, but at the same time we also lose flexibility. I'm sure this isn't news to anyone. Everyone past a certain age knows that they aren't as flexible as they once were. Sometimes the loss is not serious, but in many cases it is, and it is something we can prevent.
Flexibility is associated with our joints and it is caused primarily by the the muscles and tissue around them. When we lose flexibility these muscles do not allow us to move as we once did. In other words, we don't have the range of motion we had when we were younger. In practise, several things restrict this motion, including tendons and ligaments, but it is the muscles themselves that are usually the major culprits.
We are quite flexible up through our twenties, but for most people it's all downhill after that. Some people, in fact, lose a lot of their flexiblity by the time they are 50 or 60, and this is not only detrimental to their health but it can also have a serious affect on their posture. And as I mentioned, it is preventable.
What is the best way to stop it (and to regain what you once had)? The best thing you can do, of course, is use your muscles more -- in particular, stretch them. And this means doing stretching exercises. They may seem like a lot of work, but in the long run they will pay off.
Any exercise that stretches your muscles beyond their normal length will be helpful, but the best ones are those that stretch your muscles by about ten percent. How do you know when you're at this point? You will feel some discomfort, but no pain. It's importnat, in fact, to avoid stretching to the point where you feel pain.
Almost all parts of your body (at least, all joints) should be stretched in this way. Some of the major ones are your:
buttocks
lower back
thighs
calves
neck
upper body
I'm not going to try to describe exercises for each of these regions, but I do have a set of exercises in my book "Feel Great Feel Alive" that would be particularly helpful. See my webpage BarryParkerbooks.com