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Fitness & Sports

Flexibility In Gymnastics

Gymnastics is one of the most intensive and difficult sports in the world. It’s challenging and testing to both the mind and the body. You need skill, determination and a huge amount of physical fitness to overcome obstacles and perform at your best.

The Components of Fitness in Gymanstics

There are five different components to fitness in gymnastics:

– Muscular strength
– Cardiovascular endurance
– Body composition
– Muscular endurance
– Flexibility

Each plays an important role, but flexibility has to be one of the most time-consuming. It’s something the body does that no gymnast ever truly masters – they only get better and better at it with practice and time. Let’s take a look at a few of the reasons that flexibility is so important, and how to improve it to increase performance.

What is flexibility?

Flexibility, put simply, is the range of motion that your muscles possess. The more flexible you are, the easier it is to bend, twist and contort yourself without pain or discomfort. Many movements in gymnastics require superior flexibility, even to perform the simplest of feats.

How can flexibility be improved?

Flexibility takes time and a lot of practice to improve. You could be the fittest person in the room, but without flexibility you won’t be able to succeed gymnastically.

Daily stretching routines are the best place to start to develop flexibility. You should be pushing yourself every day to hold poses for longer and get more out of warmed up muscles. It’s important to stretch before and after any kind of exercise, but if you want to truly improve your body’s flexibility you will take the time to focus on every major muscle group at least once per day

You’ll also want to employ tools to help improve flexibility. Resistance bands and other exercise equipment can help you push your body further, safely. It’s important that you never overstretch and that you instead focus on improving yourself incrementally. Flexibility takes time and dedication; stick with your daily routine and keep challenging yourself: you’ll see results soon enough.

Of course, it always helps to improve your overall level of fitness. By losing weight, doing more exercise and building muscle, your body will become more flexible naturally. Having more strength also has obvious benefits – it might not always seem like it, but gymnastics is incredibly demanding physically. You have to be strong to compete.

Work on a daily routine and always stretch before you begin a workout. With commitment and by challenging yourself a little bit more every day, you’ll be as flexible as any other gymnast.

Shaun S O’Leary

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