Stretching

Why is stretching important? Stretching increases your flexibility, improves the range of motion of your joints, and promotes better posture and circulation. Regular stretching can even relieve stress and help prevent injury, especially if your muscles or joints are tight.

Just think of it this way, even if you didn’t eat right, or work to increase strength or aerobic fitness, just doing stretching will make you feel so much better! I think that just doing the stretches helps to increase the functional strength that will help everything you do come just a little bit easier.

When I first started working out a few months ago I started with a book called “The Shaolin Workout – 28 Days to Transforming Your Body and Soul the Warrior’s Way” by Shi Yan Ming. I bought the book because I have always been interested in the martial arts and this was a book about Shaolin Kung Fu, I thought it would be sweet. Well I can tell you the book does many things, but for the body workout, most of it is stretching and building strength using just your bodyweight.

I think if you wanted to start to get in shape and didn’t think you could this book might be a great place to start. Not only does it start slow and build up to anything hard, but it also has a “Meditation” to go with each day that talked to me as a person and for me personally was really good for my soul. Not to mention helped to keep me motivated. Here is one of my favorite quotes from the book, which happens to be a topic for one of the meditations. “If you want to do it, nothing is difficult. If you don’t want to do it, nothing is easy.”