Lifetime Fitness

By Brian Dorfman

Anyone who has read my articles knows that I am a big advocate of stretching for preventing and resolving pain and injuries.   Unlike many activities, stretching is available to just about everyone, regardless of their athletic or physical abilities.

One of the harder sells in my work, however, has been convincing athletes to stretch.   Many just want to do their sport, be it running or cycling, basketball or tennis and part of my job is to persuade them that stretching is an integral part of long term health and fitness.  The effort to train should be balanced by ease of stretching. Therefore, stretching is a way to increase the chance to play/train for years to come.

So, how can even a hard-core athlete use stretching principals to achieve their chosen goal?  

To simplify the task, let's expand the definition of stretching to include awareness of position and alignment to achieve a purpose: something like mind, body and goal.  When you are walking, standing or sitting use the same positions you use in training.  This adjustment will benefit your mechanics and mental focus while improving your athletic performance.   Using the following tips it should be easy to spot the correlation between your chosen activities and your day-to-day alignment.   

As the majority of athletes who come through my office are either runners, cyclists or swimmers (or all three) I’ll use these activities to clarify the principles of this type of stretching.   Even if you are not serious about any of these pursuits, these tips apply to you as well in your quest for lifetime fitness. 

Use These Tips Often

• When sitting, lift your upper chest and extend as if you are swimming.  
• When sitting, pivot at the hips and lean forward with your chest as if you are on your bike.  (For a more detailed description of the best way to sit check out this short video.)
• When walking or standing shift the chest forward as if you are running and elongate the front of the hips and abs as if you are swimming.
• When standing find extension in the lower back.  Use this same feeling to decrease compression when running.

Quality Respiration

Another opportunity to improve your fitness is to add quality to your respiration. Breathing should feel easy and calm. The type of abdominal- diaphragmatic ventilation, as detailed below, will decrease heart rate, cardiac output, metabolic rate, cardio-pulmonary stress, blood sugar, lactate level, and fatigue. It will increase blood and cerebral spinal fluid to the brain, lymphatic flow, digestion of dead blood cells, muscle relaxation, and counter the physical and hormonal stress of training.  Try this exercise and find the range of your breathing movement.

• Gently expand the ribs and chest when you inhale, creating a slight back bend in the thoracic spine.
• At the end of the exhale move the abdominals back so that there is a feeling as if you are starting a sit up.  (This is the reason sit-ups are done on an exhale.)
• It can help to count the length of your inhale and exhale as a way to isolate the intricate movements of the breath.
• This passive breathing should allow for maximum expansion in the ribs and complete deflation at the abdominal area.

At work and home be sure to take a moment to try out these suggestions and notice the effects.  The tendency when sitting is to slouch and compress the disk of the lower back. With standing and walking we tend to stick the stomach forward and the chest back, impeding respiratory effort and digestion.  

Mom was right: sit up straight, stand upright, remember to breathe and feel better forever.