The Importance Of Warm Up Stretching Before Sport

Warm up stretching before sport is important to get your body ready for exercise and save your muscles, ligaments and tendons from any damage.

A good set of stretches should always be performed after you have done a quick general warm up to raise your body temperature. This will ensure that you aren't stretching your muscles when they are still cold. It will also help build up the elasticity of your muscles.

Mental Stretching

• Learning to incorporate warm up stretching into your exercise routine is not only good for your body, but also for your mind. Sports such as Pilates and Yoga incorporate a lot of stretching as it helps you to relax both physically and mentally. The practice of stretching also helps you to become more adept at remembering movements over time. Stretching will help your mind prepare for the intense concentration that you need when exercising or doing sporting activities.

Ligaments, Joints and Tendons

• Your muscles are joined by ligaments and tendons to your skeleton. When you are working through your stretching routine, these will become warmer and more pliable helping you gradually become more flexible when you exercise. Make sure you work your stretches a little more each time, very gradually making the stretch bigger. This will ensure that you don't damage those tender ligaments.
• A good warm up stretching routine will also have a positive effect on your joints. If your tendons and muscles are properly supporting your skeleton, you are less likely to cause joint pain when running or putting weight on your knees, elbows, hips and ankles.

Effect in Females

• A good warm up stretching routine has been show to have a positive effect for women. In stretching the abdominal muscles, this has been shown to directly reduce menstrual cramps. Gentle movements, such as The Sphinx - one of the yoga positions will warm up the stomach and uterus area helping to lessen cramps on a regular basis. This can be particularly important if you are doing sport as cramps can be a big hindrance both to a woman's sporting performance, her mental attitude and motivation.