Stretching is extremely important, especially for mountain bikers.
Major benefits of stretching include:
- Injury prevention
- Quicker recovery
- Stronger muscles
- A happier body
Unfortunately, not every athlete knows what stretches they need to incorporate into their exercise routine. When you skip stretching because you don’t know where to start, you put your body at a higher risk of injury.
By building muscle through weightlifting, cross-training, and mountain biking, your muscles are getting much stronger. But if you don’t stretch them out after a workout, your muscles get even tighter than they were before. These tight muscles make recovery days extremely uncomfortable and increase risk of injury.
Luckily, we’ve found a great video that explains why stretching is important and how to incorporate stretching into your daily routine and exercise program.
This great video will help keep your muscles loose. Plus, as an added bonus, these stretches will also help build muscle. Now that you can build muscle while you stretch, you have no excuses!
Perform a quick warm up (jumping jacks, running in place) for 3-5 minutes before performing any of these great stretches.
By taking advantage of how easy it is to perform stretches are any time of the day (at home, at work, after a workout or ride) you can boost your athletic performance much faster than if you exercised without stretching.
As part of our mission to keep kids healthy and help develop the Santa Cruz mountain bike community, we are happy to include stretches like these into our mountain bike summer camps and after school programs.