THE SHOCKING TRUTH ABOUT AGE AND STRETCHING
Wouldn’t you love to be able to wrap your leg around your head? Or maybe just touch your toes with ease? We all *wish* …
Well it's no secret that the older you get, the tighter you get.
The peak of your flexibility is reached between the ages of six and twelve. It then levels off in adolescence and once you hit 25, it's all downhill from there.
Basically, if you don't use it you definitely lose it.
Degradation
That’s because unless you keep your muscles strong through continual activity, the muscles sadly atrophy. The tiny strands of connective tissue inside your muscles shorten as you get older, creating a nasty form of shrinkage called Adaptive Muscle Shortening, or AMS.
The other change is that instead of having firm, lean meat (yes, like beef) under your skin, aged bodies store more fat. Your muscles also become denser, carrying a greater quantity of collagen fibres in your connective tissue. Collagen is a protein; it's really strong but hardly flexible, so it makes your muscles tighter and weaker.
Lower performance
Age also changes the way muscle fibres communicate with one another. As you get older the cross links get more complicated and the messages meet more resistance as they travel through the various nerve pathways. The end result is decreased performance.
Dehydration is a huge problem as you age, especially in your tendons. Due to the lower level of movement, your joints tend to dry up because there’s less of the protective synovial fluid circulating and lubricating the area.
All of these factors add up to two things: muscles can’t easily extend and tendons are more rigid. In short, that means you can’t stretch and injuries occur more easily.
How do you avoid this mess?
Stretching. It’s that simple.
Start a regular stretching program that slowly works on extending your muscles and rebuilding their flexibility. Ageing doesn’t have to mean immobility if you continue to gently stretch, lengthen and strengthen your muscles through regular activity.