Nicole Hollar explains the difference between warmup stretches and elongation stretches. Warmup stretches like toe reaches and arm crosses take 30 to 60 seconds and prep your body before exercise. Elongation stretches build flexibility and work best during the day or after waking.
And now I wanna address that really great question of what types of stretches and when to do them. For the purpose of simplifying it, I'm gonna break it down into what I'm gonna call warmup stretches. And the other category is elongation and flexibility stretches. The warmup stretches are the ones we've always done every day. You know, before you wanna work out, you grab your foot, reach for your toe, stretch your arm out, cross your arm over your body. You probably did it 30 seconds to a minute. I've seen people do it as little as— 60 seconds. Seconds long, 3 seconds, which is really doing very little for you. These are the kind of stretches that you might do in the middle of your workday when you are sore and tired and stiff. So you get up, you move your neck side to side, you reach for your toes, you do some torso twists. These shorter, big muscle group stretches are great any time of day, definitely for a warm-up, waking up in the morning to get your blood moving and your body going.
