I spent last week at home nursing my injured back. While I would have preferred to share a rousing tale of heroism where I willfully sacrificed my body to injury to save a damsel in distress, the reality is far less theatrical. Truth be told, I hurt my back doing something so blandly routine that it’s lost to memory. I do, however, recall the pain quite distinctly.
I’ve been down this road before, so I knew what was needed to rectify the problem. We started with heat packs, a couple of aspirin, then massage, stretching, soaking in Epsom Salts, eating anti-inflammatory foods, and resting in bed. It took the better part of a week, but the pain finally subsided, and with that, natural movement returned.
I’ve been an athlete my entire adult life. I’ve also had the honor of coaching many elite and professional athletes from a variety of sports and disciplines. I know what athletes must do to prevent injuries and ensure their bodies function as near to full capability as possible. Yet I allowed a laziness and complacency mindset to creep into my routine, and I paid a very dear price for that mistake.
When your body is flexible, it can move more with greater efficiency and ease. Strength is improved along with a greater range of motion, quickness, and speed. Most important, everything hurts less and that makes training consistently far more enjoyable and you will probably stick with it rather than quit because of chronic pain.
My new regimen now includes a warmup using bodyweight only that includes mild stretching, and trunk (torso) rotation and I do this for about ten to fifteen minutes depending on how my body feels. After the workout is done my muscles are warm and more pliable so I do about twenty minutes of full-body deep stretching where I slow my breathing, relax, and slowly stretch to a full range of motion.
Some days I stretch longer, and some days my schedule may require that I keep it shorter but now I will make sure that is the rare exception and not the rule. I would rather skip a couple of sets on an exercise than skip stretching as the stretching keeps me pain-free and able to do everything better. If I find myself running out of time consistently, then I make changes to my schedule to ensure I honor that commitment to staying fit and healthy.
If you are not well-versed in stretching you may want to hire a personal trainer for a few sessions to teach you the correct form and the various stretches you can do. At the very least you can do some research stretching on YouTube and learn as much as you can from that.
