Keep Good Health with Bending, Stretching, Turning…

`Exercising` reminds people of two exercises of `aerobics, ` which consumes a lot calorie by sweating, and `muscular` exercise, which develops specific muscles using weights. However, one thing omitted is the `calisthenics`.

People usually miss the advantage of calisthenics for the health, but setting-up exercise makes up the 3 requisites of exercise along with the two exercises above. Medical circles recently make active researches on the effect of calisthenics and stress the importance of it.

Calisthenics prevents and reduces the symptoms of arthritis and lumbago. It also helps prevent the accident in an unexpected situation, and muscles and ligaments from getting hurt during doing the former two exercises. Office workers and students can reduce fatigue with calisthenics in the spare times, which leads to good posture.

▽ What’s flexibility? = Once people said drinking vinegar makes body flexible. That was brought by the ignorance of flexibility of human body.

Medically, flexibility means the moving range of joints in the body, ` and the flexible body has strong muscle, tendon and ligament, and easily expanding articular capsules, space in the joint.

Circus members and masters of yoga can make an action ordinary people can hardly follow not because they ate special meals like vinegar, but because they abnormally expanded the moving range of joints with special exercises.

Different from that known as younger people are more flexible, people gets most flexibility in their teens, when muscles expand well. In a day, body is most flexible in the afternoon. Moving in the afternoon has an effect of stretching, while muscles are not active in the morning and exhausted in the evening. One can check his flexibility by bending upper part down, which shows the moving range of the spine and pelvises. Well-muscled backside legs raise the flexibility.

▽ How to raise the inflexibility? = Strengthening muscles and tendon by exercising is the best way.

Stretching is not a mere warming up but a typical calisthenics. Stretching is expanding the range of joints, and quite needed before and after aerobics and weight training. Usually, stretching is recommended for 5 to 10 minutes before and 3 to 5 minutes after exercising.

Stretching is marvelous for preventing and reducing fatigue. Office workers, students, and drivers would feel refreshed with stretching every hour.

One should stay at fully stretched posture for 6 to 20 seconds. And one should avoid reaction in returning, which may injure muscle and tendon.

Yoga is an aggregate of stretching and good for the rest of mind. Practicing Zen and abdominal breathing also raise the flexibility, and good for energizing and the rest of mind.

(Consultant = Park Won-Ha professor in division of sport medicine of Samsung Medical Center, Jin Young-Soo head of sports medicine center in Asan Medical Center)

Seong-Ju Lee stein33@donga.com