et Fitness: stretch that body

Cairo – 01 October 2017: A lack of bodily flexibility seems to be the story of everyone’s life. We’re born able to wrap our legs around our necks, and then somewhere along the line, as we grow into adults, life gets the best of us. We stop giving ourselves time to really take care of ourselves. I know that life, often time takes over and it feels like we don’t have the time to give ourselves what we need, but when it comes to stretching, all you need is 10 minutes a day. You can either choose to do them before you begin your day or at the end of your day, whichever offers you more time.

Here are a few stretches that will help you open up your body, and lengthen your muscles and limbs to help counter all the bad habits we carry with us throughout the day. Whether you’re sitting at a computer for hours, have your head bent over to stare at your phone or are simply just running around to take care of your children, give yourself 10 minutes of “me time” to help improve the quality of your life.

Stretching your hips:

Bring one leg in front of the other, bend the front leg to have your knee away from you and your toes facing your body. Sit up straight for 30 seconds, then extend your upper body forward, supporting yourself with your hands on the floor. Thirty seconds later try and bend your body forward until your head touches the ground, hold that stretch for a minute and then switch legs.


Hips

Stretching your shoulders and triceps:

Bring your right hand up and bend it behind your head and use your other hand to support from the elbow. Hold one elbow in your other hand and then after a minute push downwards a little more to sink deeper into the stretch. Wait for a minute and then repeat.


Shoulders and Triceps

Stretching Your hamstrings:

Sit down on the floor, extend both legs in front of you, and try to reach forward as far as you can. Hold that stretch for 30 seconds and then allow yourself to push forward just a little bit more.


Hamstrings

Stretching your hip flexors, back, glutes and quads:

Begin in a lunge position and slowly start lowering yourself to the ground, at first putting your fingertips to the ground. Then sink deeper into the stretch by lowering your whole hand, then after a minute or two try to reach all the way down to your elbows. Hold that stretch for a minute and then switch legs.

It’s the little things we do, every single day, over longer periods of times that help improve the quality of our lives. Anytime we try to replace an old habit with a new one, we need to be as conscious as possible to make sure that we create these new habits and involve them in our everyday lives in order to see real change. Like I said before, baby steps.


Deana Shaaban is a performance training coach at Ignite