Fast Five: Stretching

Successful people stretch, figuratively and literally. Can we structure 10 or 15 minutes a day for self-development? 

Winning the morning helps establish a successful day. Tim Ferriss shares his morning routine. We can adopt habits and routines from successful people. 

1) Ferriss uses daily journaling to prepare and review the day, to build attitude and gratitude, and design revisions. 

He structures process to succeed today and improve tomorrow. 

2)  Morning stretch. Stretching has a panoply of advantages (Figure below from sportsinjuryclinic.net)

“Physiological warming is of benefit in preventing muscular injury by increasing length to failure and elasticity of the muscle-tendon unit.” Stretching as part of a warmup works via warming. 

Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) is especially problematic for the aging body. Trust me, I'm a doctor. 

3)  Find your own program. There's no 'gold standard'. An imperfect program, regularly completed, defeats the best program left undone. 

4) Men's Fitness has a simple DIY program that we can complete in about ten minutes covering major muscle groups. Or combine dynamic stretching to start the day and static stretches later. 

5) But would a more 'dynamic stretching' program be better? A study of dynamic stretching relative to static stretching showed mild benefits to dynamic over static stretching. 

From Patrick Troumbley, referenced above. 



For those unfamiliar with karaoke, a short description and demonstration. Kids (and adults) enjoy this stretch.