Left to my own devices I am not a big fan of stretching. It’s time consuming, boring, and border line painful. It’s even more boring than physio exercises.
I like doing activities that involve stretching–yoga and Aikido, for example. But stretching after cycling, or worse yet, before, has never been my thing. At personal training Meg builds stretching into the workout and then I stretch. Yay! (Oh, you’ll get to meet Meg soon. She’s going to guest blog for us.) Yet my knee physio involves daily stretching and I struggle to get myself to do it.
However, the Guelph gym has these cool fancy stretching machines that get you into position and then leave your hands free to check your phone while holding a stretch. I really like them.
I confess though when I am getting myself into the machine I keep thinking of medieval torture instruments. I’m reminded of a novel I read–was it by Rose Tremain?–about a young woman captured by the Inquisition who looked on at the stretching rack, knowing that she would die on it, waiting her turn. It’s one of three stories in the book. One of the others was about Joan of Arc. If you know the name of the book, could you let me know? I’m digressing. Sorry!)
But the university stretching machines are all self-controlled and you can get to a just barely comfortable position, check your Facebook notifications, and then stretch some more. I like that. I approve comments on blog posts and play moves in various word games. All while stretching.
Fitness magazines tell me that stretching is the New Big Thing. There are even whole classes devoted just to stretching and now stretching studios. For now, I’m sticking to the stretching machines and Meg’s stretching routines and the ones I can manage to do at home.
How are you about stretching? Do you like it? Do you do it?
Ugh, stretching is one of my downfalls. Like you, I stretch as part of yoga, but can’t be bothered to do it before or after another activity, like running or cycling. It feels like an extra step–if I’ve managed to get in the right mind-frame for an activity (or I’ve scheduled it), I’m ready to *do the activity* not stretch for 20 minutes first. But that also leads to injuries…so I’m trying to be more mindful about stretching.