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Stretch and Warm-Up
October 29, 2007
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Listen up parents. Your student athlete may think their body is young and invincible.
But skipping steps in their exercises regimen now will hurt them later.
Amanda Kane runs cross country for her high school. She has learned about the importance
of a proper warm-up. “It’s important to stretch before a race to loosen up your
muscles. If you don’t stretch your muscles will be tight and you won’t be able to
move your legs as easily.”
Even as teens, many athletes already feel the pain from not warming up or cooling
down properly.
“You’ll get really sore if you don’t stretch,” says Amanda.
Fellow runner Darlene Hanlon agrees. “If I don’t stretch after a hard work out and
I get home, I can barely walk that’s how bad it is. I can definitely feel my hip
pains and it affects my walking and everything.”
Physicians say proper warm-ups and stretches not only help young athletes perform
better at their sport, it could also help their muscles win a race against time.
“Sometimes we find that athletes who have been particularly aggressive in their
sports over a many, many year period of time, later in life will have problems related
to those things they did 30 or 40 years ago,” says John Kagan, MD.
Dr. Kagan also has advice for parents. “The parent needs to explain to the kids
you can’t just go out and run two miles
without warming up if you do it today you’ll
be sorry later.”
Another priority is to get your young athletes on track for healthy eating.
Dr. Kagan advises, “There are many things that have an effect on your ability to
be competitive and right at the very beginning is nutrition. I have patients sometimes
tell me, you know if I knew I was going to live this long I would have taken better
care of myself.”
Along with a healthy diet, physicians recommend a warm up with at least ten minutes
of cardiovascular activity and stretches before your work-out. The American council
on fitness says proper warm-ups give you better muscle control and improve your
joint’s range of motion.
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