Stretching, It Does a Body Good

When I think of stretching I think of my father. The perpetual stretcher. He feels he was born inflexible and is paranoid of something snapping at some point.

Thus the constant stretching.

Everywhere.

Anytime.

A photo of my padre and younger sibs back in the day.

True story (that not an isolated incident):

As a teenager we did some traveling as a family. Occasionally, we’d fly to different locations and by the time I was 16 and 17 I was ready to sit away from my parents and younger siblings (who are now grown and perfectly charming). I’d much rather share an aisle with my older, college-age sister and teenage brother swapping Depeche Mode and Erasure CDs in and out of our Discmans.

When the fasten seatbelt sign turned off my father would immediately take a stroll to stretch out his legs (and check on his teenagers). He did, and still does, this “shake-it-out” walk: 

step, kick, then shake the leg, 

step, kick, then shake the leg, 

step, kick, shake, etc. 

(I have this walk down. I will demonstrate on request).
Eventually, he made his way down the aisle of the aircraft to his older children.

We would be peacefully listening to strains of O'Lamour when a shoe would hit my armrest. My father’s shoe. 

Unmistakeable. 

Light brown Rockport walking shoe with white laces. 

And, of course, green argyle socks.

Then, the stretching ritual would begin. He would stand on one leg with the other on our chair and lean over to “get those hamstrings.” He moaned and groaned at how tight he got on airplanes. His teenagers would slowly be curling up lower and lower in their seats. If there was a way to fit under the seats we would have crawled away.

As the finale, without fail, he’d always ask us, “You know where I hurt? Right here.” 

Then point to a spot right under/in his one of his glutes and start rubbing it out.

Mortification in action.

Believe it or not, there is some controversy in the fitness field about stretching.  Some think it is useless and others don't.  I'm definitely not ready to throw it out the window and do recognize it has many benefits for our bods: 

Improved joint range of motion.

This gets more important as we age and our joints have a tendency to stiffen up.

Improved circulation of blood to joints.

When you have new or challenging workouts, soreness is often an unwelcome visitor. With the increased blood flow to the muscles, it helps reduce soreness.

Stress reduction.

Ahhhh. I am a firm believer the stretch is the reward for the workout. I used to have a trainer who would stretch me a solid 10 minutes at the end of each workout. I swear, every dollar I paid him was worth it just for those stretching sessions. Amazing.

Increases flexibility. 

My older sister, the pro dancer, has a photo from way back when (around the same years as the airplane stretching rituals). She was laying on her back, both feet out in the splits and both pointed toes touching the ground.

I’ll give you a moment to visualize this.

She is what I call an “over-stretcher”, a.k.a. Gumbo. OK, so maybe we aren’t at a “Carley-level” of stretching, but we can make improvements. Since I’ve hung up the toes shoes, my hamstrings are shamefully tight. I have to consistently work on them, or I swear, someday I’m not going to be able to sit up straight.

Stretching does have a solid place in the fitness world, but perhaps not at 40,000 feet on a crowded airplane :)

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