Featuring Phil Edwards, MCPA, CMAG (Acupuncture), Physiotherapist

Duration: 1 minute, 18 seconds

Stretching helps prevent muscle and tendon tears. Those are probably your two main injuries that will occur from not stretching.

Other things it will do is make sure that you maintain good range of motion in your joints. If your joints are limited through tight tissues, then you’re also going to make sure that you maintain joint health, as well.

A physiotherapist can help you stretch properly. Having done the appropriate assessment, they can actually put you through the moves, the stretches that you need to perform to get the maximum benefit from that position to release the tension in the tissues that you’re after.

Hip flexors are usually a significant cause of problems. Because we spend a lot of our time sitting, hip flexors tighten up. That tends to tilt our pelvis forward, and that automatically pulls our hamstrings tights.

So with just one tissue tightened, you’re affecting tissues on the opposite side of the body. If you just treat one side, you’re going to have a problem with the opposite side. You need to see a physio, somebody who’s got a professional eye who can see what needs to be balanced on both sides of the joint.

If you’re looking for a stretching program or somebody to help you with learning how to stretch properly, then a physiotherapist is the person to see.

Video shot in conjunction with //www.aesmphysiotherapytoronto.ca/

Presenter: Philip Edwards, Physiotherapist, Toronto, ON

Local Practitioners: Physiotherapist