Hello, welcome to the Bride Made Fit Podcast, I am your host Jennifer DiDonato and this Episode number 29. So thanks for joining us. Bride Made Fit is the only in home personal training service for brides to be in Metro Detroit, but the Bride Made Fit Podcast is everyone's source for health, and fitness, and information, and entertainment. So thanks for tuning in. And I also want to thank all you who are tuning in USTREAM, if you want to know when we are streaming live, which are now, every time we do the show just find me on twitter.com/jennididonato, and I just send it out there so I will tell you when we are on. If you want to find out on Facebook, I will let you know that too, Jennifer DiDonato's finding.
So now on the business, for this week's episode it is Stretching Basics, hey, Happy New Year, tomorrow it's going to be the New Year 2009, everyone has their resolutions, they want to get in shape, they want to get to it, and I know that your feeling that drive, and but maybe physically you are not matching the world part that you have, physically maybe you are unconditioned, but inside you just want to run ten miles.
I am sorry; you can't do that, because you might injure yourself. So that is why I want to talk about stretching, how to stretch properly, and why we are doing it? So first off, I just want to debunk that admit about always stretching before you workout. Now, in my training, and I preach, maybe some people think differently, but from my experience, stretching before a workout is not very good, and I am going to tell you why? You always want to make sure you are warming up first before you are stretching. So always hopping on a treadmill, or taking a walk around the block or anything, just for five or ten minutes, low impact, I do not want this sprinting, just something to get the blood flowing, because you want to consider your muscles like they are rubber band, okay? If you keep rubber band out in the cold, and you start stretching it, it is going to snap. Think of your muscles like that. You want to warm it up, so that they become more pliable, because stretching increases the range of motion, sorry about that, and also prevents injury, so we don't want you to be injured.
So if you are stretching before workout, if you prefer, always warm up. But also, if you are doing strength training, do not static stretch the muscle that you are going to be training, because studies have shown that if you are lengthening, stretching means lengthening, if you are lengthening those muscles, let's say you want to do a chest press, or if you are if you are doing chest that day, and you stretch out your chest, studies have shown that when you go to contract those muscles, they are not going to contract, it's optimally as they would have, if you did not stretch before. So we are devoting the stretching for after the workout, okay? I hope everyone understands, if not, just email me with any questions, I will answer them for you.
So let's get to work. I am going to show you some stretching, first, we are going to stretch out the Hamstring. This is a great stretching exercise you can do before you start either running, which would be after your warm up, or also if you are doing any leg presses, or any leg workout on that day. So you are just going to sit on the ground, okay, you are going to bring one foot in front of you, one leg straight out, and just tuck the other one right near your groins, you know, right near, just so it stays close to your body, and I want you to keep your chest up, exhale, come down slowly, and Chris you can pop up some notes while we are doing this. I want you to breathe normally, but I want you to hold your static stretch for 20 to 30 seconds, no bouncing, please don't bounce, okay, that might damage some of the muscles tissue and it will hurt, you will have to take some days or some time off to let it heal. So no bouncing, just breathe normally, hold for 30 seconds, and you can come back up and repeat for about another 20 or 30 seconds, and I want you to -bouncing is it, okay, none of it, yeah, oh yeah, that's right.
Now come on, we are not in the 180s workout video, no bouncing, okay, just want you to hold that, and repeat on the other leg, okay? You can do this right after you do your warm up on the treadmill. Now Hamstrings might be tight and the reason why I want to stretch out the Hamstring is so, if you have tight Hamstring it is going to put strain on the knees, and we don't want that. Another tight muscle that may also put strain on the leg that could cause either knee, hip, or ankle injuries, is the glute, your butt. If your butt is tight, that is going to effect the way you walk, and it will definitely cause some postural distortion, and may cause some injury. So the way that you can stretch out your butt, or your glute, I want you to sit in same position, and I want you to bring one leg up, see how I am crossing over the knee, I want you to hoist yourself up, and press forward, okay.
Same thing, want you to breathe normally, and I want you to hold this for 20 to 30 seconds, okay. This may even workout your triceps too, if you are holding your self up. But I want you to press forward and aim your knee towards the wall, so aim it forward, and that is going to stretch all in here, I really feel it, it really kind of hurts, but it is a good hurt. I want to stretch that out, and that is going to be good for loosening up the hips, hip abductors, and the glute. Okay, because you want to be nice and pliable when you are doing -- when you are running on the treadmill, when you are doing a leg presses, enhances your hamstring probably. Now, I am just going to go ahead and stand up, I am going to show you some also stretches that you can do for your upper body. Okay, we use our shoulders a lot, the shoulders I swear they are like how the butt is to a joke, okay? Our shoulder always get the brunt of everything, because there is not a lot of circulation going on in there, but there is lot going on in there.
So the reason why we are getting a lot of injuries, is because our chest is too tight, or couching forward, or back is too tight. So what I want to do is, show you some movements you can do to help loosen up the shoulders, and also the chest and back. So we are going to do first the chest. What I want you to do -- you can pop up some notes if you like, I want you to find a wall or something that, a bar, pillar, whatever, and I want you to put your arm in 90 degree angle, palm facing forward, and opposite leg I want you to come forward, lean forward, stick you chest out, I want you to feel that stretching into your pec minor and pec major, and just breathe normally, hold for 20 to 30 second, and you can repeat, but this is -- what this is doing, this is loosening up the muscles that are connecting to the shoulder, which is in the chest, and lot of times if you are sitting forward at a desk or at the computer, you are going to be hunching forward.
So that may contribute to the tightness, so loosen that up a little bit, okay, and I want you repeat. So let me know how it feels, I want you to try all these, and of course I am going to have these up on my notes, on the Bride Made Fit blog, right below this video, step by step how to do them.
So if you are watching this either on YouTube, or any other video hosting sites, you can go to www.BridesMadeFitBlog.com, and check out some more detailed notes, and you can even print it off, and take it with you wherever you do your stretching, and if you need to contact me at all, let me know how it feels, or if you have any comments about this particular episode, or any other episode, just contact me at jenny@BridesMadeFit.com, and I want to be your friend, getting lot of friends I feel cool, I am just joking, such a dork, find me on Twitter at twitter.com/jennydidonato and also on Facebook, I am Jennifer DiDonato on Facebook, and like I was saying early on the show, you can see us life on USTREAM, because after the show I like to chat with some of the people who are watching, and if you have any questions, I can answer right there for you.
So always keep an eye out on Twitter
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