Whether you're a competitive athlete or a weekend warrior, improving your flexibility can help improve your performance on the field or court. Increased range of motion in your joints means improved ability to throw a ball or swinging a golf club. Improved flexibility in your joints also decreases your chances of injury. While we are all limited to some degree by genetics and our individual joint physiology, we can all increase our flexibility through stretching and other activities.
Yoga
One of the great benefits of yoga is that it helps improve your balance and flexibility without placing a strain on your heart and lungs. Yoga uses body poses held for a period of time to help improve your body's stability and the ability of your muscles to undergo stress. Besides these benefits, yoga helps stretch your joints to their limits to increase your flexibility.
Pilates
Like yoga, pilates is designed to condition your body without adding on unwanted muscle bulk. A pilates class often focuses on strengthening and conditioning your torso, or
"core," through controlled movements. Pilates practitioners tout its ability improve your overall health and muscle tone while increasing your overall flexibility at the same time, resulting in overall better health. Pilates often involves mat exercises coupled with equipment like exercise balls to help increase your strength and flexibility.
Dance
Whether you like the intensity of aerobics or the grace of ballet, dancing is a great way to develop increased range of motion in your joints. Dancing itself forces your body in motion, helping to increase your flexibility by placing your body in unusual positions. Like dance, aerobics combines the resistance of your body weight with unusual positions to help increase your flexibility.
Stretching
Many sports require a period of stretching during the "warmup" phase of practice. But you don't have to wait until then to stretch. Once you learn which muscles and joints you need to stretch you can spend a few minutes a day stretching. Done properly, you can begin to see increased range of motion in a few weeks. You should be careful to not overdo it because over-stretched muscles can result in muscle strains or even a torn muscle.
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