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Improving Muscle Flexibility and Strength
Physical conditioning enhances your aerobics program by helping your muscles remain flexible and strong. Stretching keeps your muscles flexible, while resistance exercises build strength. Both types of exercise are needed to keep your muscles in top physical condition.
What Muscles Do
Muscles help us stand, sit, recline, bend, stretch, twist...in short, muscles make us move. Muscles also support our entire skeletal system. To help us move freely and to support our bodies, muscles must be flexible and strong. Stiff, weak muscles can limit movement and lead to poor posture, back and joint pain, and increased risk of injury.
Stretching For Flexibility
Exercises such as touching your toes, where you gradually extend and release a muscle, are called stretching exercises. To understand how stretches work, think of a muscle as a rubber band. A too-tight rubber band is likely to snap or break when you extend it unless you gradually stretch and release it to make it more supple. A too-tight muscle can "pull" if it is not stretched regularly to keep it flexible. Stretching before vigorous exercise can help prevent muscle strain and injury. Stretching after exercise can help prevent muscle soreness.
Resistance For Strength
Exercises such as push-ups, where your muscles work against a resisting force, are called resistance exercises. The force you work against can be your own body weight (as in pushups) or an external force (as in weight-lifting). The idea is to gradually increase the load a muscle can bear so that muscles become larger, stronger, and work more efficiently. Strong, efficient muscles support our bodies better and use oxygen more effectively, thereby placing less strain on our hearts. Increasing the amount of weight you resist builds strength while increasing the amount of times you do each exercise (repetitions) improves endurance.
How Much and How Often?
Just a few minutes of stretching will help limber and warm up your muscles. Vary your stretches to include the major muscle groups: back, abdominal, legs, arms, and chest. Stretch throughout the day to relieve muscle tension and restore flexibility.
Begin building strength with resistance exercises that you can do easily 6-10 times without straining. Try to do at least one exercise for each of the major muscle groups. When scheduling your fitness program, plan on doing resistance exercises on the days when you are not exercising aerobically.
Enjoying the Results
A well-conditioned body is like a well-tuned car; it is a joy to own, a pleasure to operate, and a dependable machine you can rely on. Within a few short weeks of beginning your conditioning program, you'll notice the results; increased flexibility, strength, and overall endurance.
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