Stretching is an excellent thing to do for good health. Simple, effective stretches help you warm up for sports, improve your balance and prevent falls, increase your flexibility, and even help relieve arthritis, back, and knee pain. Whether you’re an armchair athlete or a sports enthusiast, stretching exercises can help extend your range of motion, says the Special Health Report from the experts at Harvard Medical School. To understand how stretching helps, it is key to understand what joints, tendons, and ligaments do: JOINTS are the junctions that link bones together. The architecture of each joint — that is, whether its structure is a hinge, pivot, or ball-in-socket — determines how the bones can move. TENDONS are flexible cords of strong tissue that connect muscles to bones. LIGAMENTS are tough, fibrous bands of tissue that bind bone to bone, or bone to cartilage, at a joint. When you stretch, you are working muscles and tendons rather than ligaments. Ligaments are not supposed to be elastic. An overly stretchy ligament wouldn’t provide the stability and support needed for a safe range of movement. Start Stretching and Enjoy...
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 16:29:22 +0000
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