What Is One Benefit to Measuring Your Bodyã¢â‚¬â„¢s Flexibility?

Story highlights

• Poor flexibility can hamper athletic functioning and increase the risk of injuries
• Being overly flexible won't necessarily confer any additional health benefits

(CNN)We often hear about the importance of stretching, peculiarly subsequently exercise, to ameliorate flexibility. Indeed, studies accept found that regular stretching can increase flexibility in equally little as four weeks. Just getting results requires commitment: You need to stretch at least iii days a calendar week, ideally every twenty-four hour period. Activities such as yoga and Pilates tin can improve flexibility, as well.

How flexible y'all are and how flexible you can get are too influenced by factors that you tin can't control, such as genetics and gender. As anyone who has ever observed a co-ed yoga grade can attest, women tend to be more flexible than men. Injuries and certain weather condition like arthritis tin also limit flexibility.

Historic period plays a role, also. Starting around age thirty or 40, flexibility continuously decreases, with men losing flexibility more quickly than women. Just this decline doesn't occur uniformly throughout the body.

Enquiry shows that the shoulders and trunk tend to lose flexibility more speedily than the elbows and knees, for example. At whatever age, you may be relatively flexible in i role of your body and take express range of motion in another. Flexibility can also vary from 1 side to another.

As for how much flexibility is optimal, there's no definitive answer. We know that having poor range of motion can hamper athletic performance, increase the risk of injuries and make tasks of daily living more difficult. It's too true that a loftier level of flexibility can be beneficial if you do activities such equally gymnastics, swimming or ballet. Just this doesn't mean we should all strive to become human pretzels.

Only as extreme inflexibility tin lead to problems, so can farthermost flexibility. People who are double-jointed -- or have "joint hypermobility," as the condition is technically known -- are more likely to experience pain and sports-related injuries. Interestingly, they're too at higher take a chance of anxiety disorders. (Why the ii conditions are related is unknown.)

Between the ii extremes is a wide range of satisfactory flexibility levels. Being on the upper end of the range may impress your friends in yoga classes or games of Twister, but it won't necessarily confer any additional health benefits.

Instead of worrying about how your flexibility stacks up against that of others, you should focus on what's right -- and realistic -- for yourself. Assess what your needs are and how stretching might address them. For case, mayhap a certain part of your body is especially inflexible and holding you back in your workouts. Or perhaps you desire to improve your flexibility to help your lawn tennis or golf game, or to get on the floor and play with your kids or grandkids.

Any the case, here are a few relatively simple tests y'all can utilise to assess your flexibility. Do them after a warmup or conditioning.

Sit down and reach

Developed in the 1950s, this archetype exam of flexibility in the hamstrings and lower back has several variations. Here's a DIY version from the YMCA that requires merely a yardstick and masking record.

• Put the yardstick on the ground with a strip of tape across the 15-inch mark.
• With your shoes off, sit down on the floor with the yardstick between your legs and the 0-inch stop closest to y'all.
• Keep your legs straight and your anxiety nigh 12 inches apart. Sitting up straight, position your heels at the 14-inch marking.
• Place 1 hand directly on top of the other and slowly reach forward as far every bit you can without bouncing. Drib your head if information technology helps, and be certain to exhale as you stretch.
• Annotation where the ends of your fingers achieve on the yardstick. Repeat 2 more than times and record the uttermost distance.

Zipper

This exam of shoulder flexibility measures how closely you can bring your easily together behind your back. You lot need a tape measure or ruler and an assistant.

• Stand and heighten your correct arm above your head. Bending your right elbow, achieve backside your caput with your palm touching your body. Reach as far downward the middle of your back equally you lot can, with your fingers pointed down.
• Place your left arm backside your back with your palm facing out and your fingers upwardly. Reach up equally far every bit possible and try to bear upon your other hand.
• Have someone measure the distance between the ends of your middle fingers. If they don't run across, record the length of the gap as a negative number. If they bear on, score that as a zero. If they overlap, tape the length of the overlap as a positive number.
• Practice the test ii more times and record your best reading. And so switch arms, putting your left hand behind your caput, and repeat.

Sitting-rising

This examination, developed past a Brazilian doctor, has received attending every bit a tool to predict mortality risk in middle-aged and older people. But research suggests that it can likewise be an indicator of flexibility (as well as strength and balance) in people of all ages. No equipment is required, simply you need sufficient space and a surface that'south non glace.

• Continuing barefoot, attempt to sit down on the floor with every bit trivial support equally possible from your hands, legs, artillery or other body parts. Crossing your legs is fine.
• From the seated position, try to stand, again with as little support equally possible.
• Give yourself a score of 5 if y'all sat with no support at all and 5 if yous got up without support. For each support required, such every bit a mitt, forearm, knee, side of a leg or hand on a knee, decrease 1 point. Subtract a half-point if you were wobbly sitting or continuing.
• Practice the test twice and combine your best scores sitting and rising.

There'southward no need to go perfect scores on these tests -- though if yous exercise, that'southward nifty. Instead, use the results to runway improvements in flexibility over time. That way, you can tell whether all those shoulder stretches or Cobra poses are paying off.

Robert J. Davis is editor-in-chief of Everwell and co-author of Fitter Faster: The Smart Fashion to Arrive Shape in Merely Minutes a Twenty-four hours.

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Source: https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/30/health/flexibility-tests-davis/index.html

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