How to Enhance Body Flexibility

You’re not alone to have lived those chilly cold winter mornings while you wake up feeling stiff and stumble creakily out of your bed. While sleeping, the body lays down the cobwebs and that’s the reason you feel tight in the morning. Stress, age, hectic professional life and your love of gadgets are mainly responsible for stiffness and poor posture that can add years to your body and appearance. Fortunately, with some specific flexibility enhancing exercises, you can have enhanced flexibility and a youthful body in as little as only 30 days.

How exercises improve flexibility

Exercises, especially yoga, take the joints through their range of motions while flex, extend and rotate the spine. It also helps to open your shoulders and chest ensuring good posture, relieving stress muscles and loosening hips. Push stretches as much your body permits without causing any strain and discomfort. Click to learn more about flexibility workouts.

Exercises for better flexibility 

When you’ve already set a 30-day deadline to achieve your flexibility goal – you need to have a solid plan, dedication and a dose of diligence.  Plan a daily stretching session of just 15 to 20 minutes for a month, and discover a new ‘YOU’ who is much more flexible than ever before.

  • Waisting away – Stretching the middle torso including your waist line ensures much more than sheer flexibility. A flexible and strong core protects the back from posture-related injury and rectifies posture. Stand straight with the feet hip-width apart. Now place the left hand on waist while extending the right hand overhead. Place the hips and the shoulders in a position so it forms a square to the front – exhale and slowly hinge the torso to left. Now bend keeping the right hand over the head. Bend without stressing your body. Now inhale and return back to the initial position. Start with 3 reps building up to 20 over weeks.
  • Loosening legs – Quads, the big thigh muscles are the key workhorses of legs. On the other hand, calves and hamstrings – the posterior leg muscles become shortened with inactivity. Stretching those muscles can notably boost up flexibility. Stand with your legs hip-width apart or together. Now bend slowly from the hips. Place both the hands on fronts of your legs and slide the hands down your legs while hinging forward. Go as much as you can and spend 30 seconds at that position breathing normally and getting okay with the stretch. Now get back to the standing position slowly. Do 3 reps at a time and increase the stretch of those posterior leg muscles slowly and gradually.
  • Unwinding the shoulders – The shoulders may get tight with sitting hunched over the desk long hours at a time over years. To make back of the shoulders relaxed, you need to extend the arms in front of you and parallel to the ground. Now place the left elbows on top of the right elbow. And from this particular position, raise both forearms until they become perpendicular to ground. With the arms at a shoulder-height, grasp the fingers of your hands together. Hold on for 10 seconds in that position. Now loosen up the arms and repeat the stretch – this time, you just stretch with the right elbow on top of the left.

There is another shoulder stretch for opening the fronts of the shoulders. Begin with a standing position with the feet hip-width apart and clasping the hands behind you. Gradually raise the arms up and away from your body while keeping the shoulders down. Don’t put stress – go as much as your body permits. Release the hands and shake out. Alternate these two stretches working up to at least 10 times over the course of one month.

  • Letting the back to relax – Having a flexible back can alleviate years of poor posture. Lower your body to the ground while placing yourself on the knees and hands. You can keep your toes relaxed or flexed against the base. Now slowly inhale. And then as you exhale, tenderly round the back upward while drawing the abdomen toward spine, relax the neck and look down at the base. Breathe out and little by little hollow the back while keeping your hands planted on the ground and the arms straight. Now raise your head slowly until you’re staring at the ceiling. Do 3 reps and increase to 20 over the course of 30 days.

Make your mind, take up the challenge and go ahead – the hardest part is to start so get to it. To keep a track of progress, maintain a chart and see how long you’re left to reach your flexibility goal.