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Never Stretch When You First Wake Up!

March 26, 2016 0 Comments

I wanted to make a quick video to show you why you shouldn’t stretch first thing in the morning.

Lets talk about your spine. Between every vertebrae, every bone in your back, you have a disc. This disc is mainly water. Here’s kind of a cool fact: When you wake up in the morning, you’re about a half inch taller then you are in the afternoon.

This is because of these discs. Throughout the day your body compresses and each disc loses a little bit of water, so each one loses a little bit of height. Then when you go to bed at night they re-hydrate and fill back up. When you get up in the morning, that’s why you feel all stiff; because all of your discs are at their fullest capacity. So when they’re big and full and stiff, that’s when you don’t want to be stretching. This is when they’re most likely to get injured. You want to be awake for at least thirty minutes, better yet an hour, and up on your feet where your body weight compresses the discs, and makes the discs just a little bit smaller. You want to get a little more motion before you do any stretching, you’ll be much less likely to injure any of these guys.

Another thing that’s very important, if you work out in the mornings (which I love because I’m a morning person) try not to get up at 4:50 to work out at 5:00. Try and wake up a little bit earlier, so that you’re up for a while, to allow your discs to shrink a little bit, so you’re not so stiff coming for a work out, and you’ll have much less of a chance of getting injured during a workout.

So the rule: never stretch when you get up first thing in the morning, it’s better to do it after at least an hour of activity.

Filed in: Exercise

About the Author:

At Eupraxia we not only teach the best way to exercise, we also teach our members about nutrition and food. Our goal is to help people take control of their own health!

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