What’s known as “the recovery model” has become a dominant force in mental health care, but what does it mean? Not everyone has the same definition. For some people, it means their symptoms are gone, or at least greatly reduced. For others, it means being able to live their life how they want to achieve personal satisfaction.

Generally, the recovery model concentrates on a broader, more holistic approach to mental health care. Rather than doctors dictating to patients, it allows patients to direct their own treatment based on their wants and needs. The attitude is that recovery is possible, but it may look different for everyone.

You may not be able to cure something like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, but the recovery model states that you can still have a good quality of life. You can still be part of society, and you don’t have to be shut away in an institution. In addition to treating the illness, there’s a focus on things like stable housing; strong and supportive relationships with family, friends and the community; and discovering a meaningful purpose in life.

The recovery model is often held up in contrast to “the medical model”, which focuses on the idea of mental health conditions being illnesses with definitive physiological causes that you can then treat with medication. These two approaches don’t have to be in conflict. Taking aspects from both can provide more comprehensive and effective support for those with mental illness.

Trying to improve the quality of care for people with mental illnesses is an ongoing challenge. Psychologists, psychiatrists, social services, governments, and charities are all constantly working on new ways to help achieve recovery. There’s probably never going to be one absolute solution that works for all people, but that doesn’t mean we can’t continue to make things better.

What is certain is that recovery doesn’t have to be an elusive dream. With the right approach and support and everyone involved working together, mental illness doesn’t have to stop you from living your life.

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This is a problem because if you’re not getting the nutrients you need, the healing process is going to be a lot slower. That’s true of physical injuries, of getting over a virus, of trying to overcome an addiction, and of recovering from major surgery. It’s even true when you’re not seriously hurt, like when you’ve just done a heavy exercise session and your muscles are all aching. You might not want to do anything, including thinking about food.

Portion size isn’t as important as making sure you get all of the necessary nutrients, with some being even more important during recovery. For example, eat dairy products full of calcium to strengthen your bones or protein-rich foods to help with muscle repair. Iron and zinc are also important when trying to repair the body.

Fruit and vegetables are always important and can make up simple snacks if you can’t face a full meal. They’re full of essential nutrients however you eat (or drink) them, whether on their own or as an ingredient in a larger dish. They also contain fiber, which will help your overall digestion.

Keeping hydrated is also vital. This doesn’t just have to be water. As mentioned, milk and fruit juice are both full of vitamins and minerals. Tea and coffee have lots of health benefits and can boost your energy levels. Even soup can count towards your fluid intake.

If you’re having trouble maintaining a balanced diet, you may find you struggle to heal. You may also lose weight and feel more tired. After an illness, injury or hospital stay, you need to be paying extra attention to making sure your diet is adequate. If you still can’t manage it, you may need some form of dietary supplement.

This may mean various forms of tablets or capsules that you can swallow for a nutrient boost. You may also want to enrich your regular diet, such as by adding cheese or butter to dishes to increase the protein. You may also need to consume more fat than normal without worrying about potential weight gain. Your body needs the energy.

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There’s lots of large, unfamiliar equipment that looks like it could cause you some damage if you use it incorrectly. There are people with big muscles who look like they’ve been training for years and move with intimidating confidence around the room. There’s noise and business that just makes you feel shut out. Suddenly you feel very small and very alone.

Lots of people want to exercise, but many of them won’t make it past that first rush of eagerness. If you want to start training, you could bring a companion with you to offer encouragement, help you figure out any problems and maybe offer some friendly rivalry. If you run any kind of fitness studio, from aerobics to gym to yoga, you could take steps to establish a welcoming feel in your studio.

In recent years, group training (more than five people doing the same exercise together) has been fairly consistently one of the top fitness trends (https://journals.lww.com/acsm-healthfitness/Fulltext/2018/11000/WORLDWIDE_SURVEY_OF_FITNESS_TRENDS_FOR_2019.6.aspx). It seems a lot of people are taking advantage of the benefits that a fitness community can provide.

People who exercise together rather than alone are more likely to stick to their program and less likely to cancel their membership. They enjoy sessions more, meaning improved motivation, focus and self-esteem. Members of fitness communities can hold each other accountable, pushing everyone to do better. When one person is struggling, the others can pick them up again. When one person does well, it will be reinforced by congratulations from the rest of the group.

It’s not easy to establish a fitness community. Some people have their blinders on when they exercise and may not want to even consider breaking from their own insular approach. It requires a lot of communication and openness between all participants as well as with owners/trainers. You’ll need patience to properly establish and grow the necessary relationships.

Get it right, however, and you’ve found a way to make exercise more effective. Not only can you get physically fitter, but you can brighten your mood, improve your mental performance and build new and meaningful relationships with your fellow exercisers. The value of community to exercise should not be underestimated.

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Generally, the benefits of sport and exercise far outweigh the risks. That doesn’t mean they’re guaranteed to be harm-free, however. Let’s take a look at sports injuries and why they happen, how to avoid them and how to manage them if they do occur.

It can be worryingly easy to injure yourself. All you have to do is fail to warm up properly or push yourself too hard. Using bad techniques or faulty equipment are also danger factors. And sometimes you’ll just have an accident, like slipping and falling.

Some parts of the body are more at risk than others. Ankles and knees, which take a lot of wear and tear just in normal daily life, are near the top of the list, but every joint, muscle and ligament can feel the damage if something goes wrong.

If you start to feel pain while exercising, stop immediately. Trying to push through it could cause more harm. Other symptoms to look out for include stiffness and swelling. Not all injuries will be immediately apparent, and it could take a few hours after your session for you to realize something’s wrong.

Luckily, most injuries are unlikely to be severe. They’ll heal naturally given time and maybe some over-the-counter painkillers. A good acronym to remember is RICE, or “rest, ice, compression and elevation”. With an injury like a sprain or strain, give it time to recover, apply an ice pack, compress it (such as with a bandage or sling, though not so tightly it reduces circulation) and elevate it so it’s at a higher level than your heart. This should reduce swelling and pain.

Other injuries, such as broken bones, need attention from a medical professional. This is especially true with head injuries, which can cause severe internal consequences even when you look and feel fine on the outside. Doctors, physiotherapists and fitness professionals are also the people to talk to if you want to know how to exercise safely in a manner that suits your individual body. That’s how you reduce the risk and impact of injuries.

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It might be frustrating, but the effort involved in trying to exercise more is normally worth it in the end. Put simply, people who exercise regularly live longer than those who don’t. If you care about longevity, you need to care about exercise.

There’s been a lot of research into how exercise impacts life expectancy (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3395188/). Basically, it dramatically decreases your risk of developing the conditions that can kill you early, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, heart attacks, heart disease, strokes and cancer. They’re all less common in people who exercise regularly.

Exercise done properly improves the health of your heart and lungs, strengthens bones and muscles, and can even have a positive impact on your mental health. All these things are likely to make your life longer and better.

While there’s a lot of room for variation in how you exercise, some of it does need to be hard enough to get your blood pumping. You need aerobic activity (the energetic kind that gets you out of breath) as well as strength and mobility training. A well-rounded routine will cover everything.

You do still need to be careful about injury, especially if you already have health problems. Pushing too hard, too fast can cause damage that will make things more difficult in the long run. From pulled muscles to broken bones and head injuries, failing to train safely can cause a whole range of issues.

Get to know your own body and what it’s capable of, and learn how far you can push without causing harm. Talk to doctors, physical therapists, personal trainers and other experts who can advise you based on your specific needs. Make sure that the rest of your lifestyle is designed to augment your exercise, such as eating and sleeping properly and giving up smoking.

Everyone’s a bit different in terms of what they get from exercise, but no one benefits from ignoring it completely. If you want to live a long life, it’s one of the most important things you can do.

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If you want to emulate them, there may be one simple practice that you can learn from the residents of Okinawa (https://www.bluezones.com/2020/07/why-the-okinawan-practice-of-sitting-on-the-floor-is-linked-to-health-mobility-and-longevity-how-you-can-practice-it-at-home/#). Rather than sitting on a chair, try to make a habit of sitting on the floor. It doesn’t sound like much, but you’d be amazed what it can do.

Sitting on the floor means having to regularly stand back up and sit down again. That’s exercise. Every time you do it, you work your muscles, from your core to your back to your legs. If you take up residence on the floor every time you eat or talk to a friend, or even just when you are relaxing, you’re going to be standing up again dozens of times in a single day. That’s a lot of muscle work.

It’s not only the standing up part that can have positive benefits. If you’re sitting properly on the floor, your posture can also improve. Research indicates that your overall musculoskeletal fitness will improve, with benefits to mobility and flexibility as well as strength.

In fact, studies suggest that people who can sit on the floor and then stand up again without needing extra support are more likely to have long lives overall. There is a genetic component to longevity, but even more important is our environment and how we live. Sitting and standing are such small things, but they can have a big impact.

We all know how important exercise is to health, but that doesn’t mean activity should be confined to the odd trip to the gym. The more active you are throughout the day, even if it’s only small activities, the better. By designing your home in such a way that you force yourself to move more, you are giving yourself the best chance to improve not just your longevity, but your quality of life.

Of course, there’s more to living like an Okinawan than sitting on the floor, and this is only one aspect of your overall lifestyle, but it may still be something worth giving a try.

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Life is defined by how we move, whether it’s physically, mentally or emotionally. Progress involves going forward, which means we need to avoid getting stuck in place. Loosening up may involve things like exercises to stretch out our muscles, but we also need to be in the right headspace.

You’ll never know just how far you can go until you try. Sometimes we find ourselves believing it’s impossible for us to go any further than we have already. That stops us from making the effort. We need to encourage ourselves to push on, even when it looks difficult.

Sometimes this means breaking things down into smaller steps and more realistic goals. Other times we might need assistance, whether it’s from a teacher or trainer who can help us learn the most effective techniques or a friend who can meet the challenge with us and make us feel like we’re not alone.

Once we get going, we have to find a way to keep it up. You complete the first stage, you stretch that little bit further than before, and then you might be tempted to say “that’s it” like you’ve finished. There’s always room for improvement, and that means you need to keep finding new ways to motivate yourself.

There will be slip-ups along the way. Perhaps you’ll get an injury, or maybe you’ll lose someone important to you and it will completely throw you off. Now you don’t just have to work to improve; you have to work to get back where you started. It’s easy to despair when it feels like all your progress is going down the drain.

These are the times when mindset is most important and you have to be patient with yourself. No one expects you to jump straight to the finish line. Again, it’s the little things that make all the difference. As long as you keep doing something, no matter how small, you can feel like you’re still fighting.

Whatever mobility means to you, it’s always something that can be improved if you approach it in the right way.

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When it comes to athletics, testosterone tends to get most of the attention. It’s often considered the male hormone, but it is present in both men and women. Men tend to have more, which contributes to things like increased muscle mass that are obviously valuable when it comes to sports performance.

If you’re talking about sex hormones like testosterone, estrogen may also get a mention. Generally considered the female hormone, everyone has at least some. Among its many roles are helping your skin stay healthy and repairing injuries, as well as affecting your metabolism. Basically, most parts of your body are going to perform differently depending on the amounts of both testosterone and estrogen you have.

There are hormones in our digestive system that control when we get hungry and when we feel full. Ghrelin, leptin, cholecystokinin and secretin are just some of them. When it comes to things like losing and gaining weight, these hormones have a vital role to play.

Insulin is also a hormone associated with digestion. In particular, it regulates the sugar in our blood, the amount of which changes after we eat. Most people only think of insulin in the context of diabetes, but the fact that diabetes can be life-threatening shows you just how important insulin is to healthy functioning. Diabetics will tell you that they can’t perform well when their blood sugar isn’t working properly.

Then there are the hormones that affect your mood, like endorphins. It’s a lot easier to perform physically when your head is in the right place, and exercise can be a powerful way to release endorphins and give your mood a boost. Performance isn’t just about the physical; it’s about trying to get the physical, mental and emotional to work together.

From head to toe, your body is full of hormones sending messages to different organs and triggering different processes. All of them have a vital role to play, so understanding them and how they work for you is an important step in improving performance.

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One way to make it easier is to team up with other people. On your own, you’re answerable only to yourself. If you decide you don’t feel like exercising, there’s nothing to stop you and there are no real consequences – except maybe feeling bad.

Being part of a group gives you extra motivation. You don’t just do it for yourself; you do it because you don’t want to let the group down. They encourage you, and you encourage them in return. Sometimes that’s just what you need to make you stick to your routine. It can also add an element of competition. Maybe you’re not mutually supporting each other, and perhaps you’re trying to beat each other. Either way, it means you’ll push yourself harder and so will they.

Some activities, such as team sports, are obviously communal experiences. You can’t play them at all without other people, and that means you need to communicate and share ideas. You’re all driven by a common goal, and that can be a powerful experience mentally as well as physically.

Then there are sports that can be done solo but often become communal. For example, you could go running by yourself, or you could join a running club. Many professional athletes train together, and in long-distance races, they may group together for mutual support for part of the course before they break for the finish. There are very few kinds of fitness routines where cutting yourself off completely from other people is likely to result in your best performance.

It’s not just everyday exercise that benefits from community participation. There have been lots of studies on how community can affect exercise outcomes, from how it benefits people with multiple sclerosis (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23128667/) to its role in cancer recovery (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33751225/). All the research suggests community can be a powerful tool in fitness, which is why community-based exercise is becoming more popular.

If you run a gym or other kind of fitness center, you want it to be welcoming to as many people as possible. That means staff need to build relationships with customers while creating a friendly atmosphere. This will help establish a sense of community that will encourage people to keep coming back. There’s even evidence to suggest that group classes come with higher retention rates than individual gym workouts (https://www.ihrsa.org/improve-your-club/15-surprising-facts-about-health-club-member-retention/).

These are all compelling reasons that exercise should not be treated as a solo endeavor. If you want the best outcomes from your fitness routine, building a sense of community with other participants may be one of the most effective ways. Not only does it improve your motivation and push you to try harder, but it will make the overall exercise experience much more enjoyable and therefore something you are more likely to continue.

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You get to the gym raring to go and you immediately want to push yourself with the heaviest weights, seeing if you’re better than you were last time. That would be a mistake. You probably know you need to warm up first, and one important part of any warmup is stretching.

Stretching is the most important way to improve your flexibility, and it can be incorporated into any exercise routine. It makes your muscles longer and joints looser, so you’re better able to tackle any fitness challenge and less likely to injure yourself. To maximize your body’s general performance, you need to think about flexibility as well as power.

This doesn’t mean you should just throw yourself into stretching. Like with any exercise, you need to take it slowly to start. Be careful, and be aware of your own body. You can stretch as part of your warmup and again when you cool down, but you must not stretch completely cold muscles or you could cause some damage. The same is true when you’re still recovering from an injury. Gentle stretching can be effective and doesn’t have to be painful. Always listen to advice from doctors, physios and other experts.

In general, flexibility is about being able to have the full range of movement in your joints. That means they can bend and extend fully (hinge joints like the elbows) or rotate properly (ball and socket joints like the hip). If they’re too loose, you may be more at risk of dislocation injuries, but they definitely won’t be healthy if you don’t keep them flexible.

Everyone has their own natural range when it comes to flexibility in the joints. Even if you’re not injured, sometimes you won’t be able to push past a certain point. That’s okay, and you risk causing more damage if you try too hard. What you can do is keep trying some gentle exercises just to keep them within that natural range. It will alleviate some of the unavoidable things that can damage your flexibility, like aging.

If you make sure to incorporate flexibility training into your routine early on, it will serve you well in the long term. Mobility problems are often associated with old age and conditions such as arthritis. The more flexible you are to start, the less likely these are going to cause you serious problems with basic movement as you get older.

You can’t ignore this important aspect of fitness. You should feel encouraged to train for flexibility as well as strength if you really want your body to be at its best. Incorporating stretches and similar exercises into your routine is a valuable way to improve your overall health in the long term.

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There are ways you can mitigate some of these effects, however. The healthier your lifestyle, the longer you’ll be able to maintain your mobility and the better you’ll feel generally. That starts with hydration. If you don’t get enough fluids, nothing in your body will work properly, including your muscles, ligaments and joints.

Just like mobility, hydration is something that gets more difficult as we grow older. As you age, you need to drink more. Nearly every one of the body’s systems is affected by your water intake. It keeps the digestive system working, it helps carry oxygen and nutrients around the body, it’s essential to healthy skin, and perhaps most relevant to your mobility, it can lubricate your joints.

Not only that, when you’re properly hydrated, you’re going to feel better mentally. You’ll be able to concentrate and feel more energized, meaning you’re better equipped for another essential part of the quest to at least maintain if not improve your mobility: exercise.

This doesn’t just mean yoga, although that does include a particular focus on flexibility. Stretching can be incorporated into any larger fitness routine as part of your warm-up or cool-down, whether you’re lifting weights in the gym or going for a cross-country run. Mobility may not be as glamorous as strength or endurance, but different types of training can work together to make you the best you can be.

Another thing you need to make sure that your exercise regimen is as efficient as possible, and therefore helps keep your body and mobility in top shape, is proper nutrition. You can get some water from food, but you also get the carbs, protein, vitamins and minerals that you need to increase energy levels, build muscle, repair injuries and generally keep all your systems functioning properly.

Maintaining mobility may get more difficult as you age, especially if you have injuries or other health conditions that make you less flexible. You need to adapt your routine so you don’t cause yourself more damage while ensuring you maintain a relatively consistent routine when it comes to exercise. It doesn’t even have to be particularly strenuous training; even some light stretching, if you do it every day, can do a lot of good. Just make sure you consult with your doctor or physiotherapist first to determine what’s best for you.

You can’t do anything about aging itself, but you can influence the things that go with it. The more effort you put in when you’re young and the more aware you are of the way your body changes as you grow older, the better your overall health will be. That includes your mobility, which in turn will make it easier to remain strong and active in general while helping you feel better mentally.

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It might start with making sure you eat properly through the day so you have the right balance of nutrients and sticking to your exercise regimen even when it’s hard, but there are other ways you can give yourself a boost.

One of those ways is through supplements. These can be used to increase energy, build muscle mass and generally improve your performance. Sometimes, however, snake oil salesmen offer you products that have no scientific basis and may even be harmful if you take them too often.

The first and most important thing to remember is that dietary supplements cannot be used as a substitute for a healthy and balanced diet. It’s in the name. They’re supplemental to the protein, carbs, fruit and vegetables that you need to survive. What supplements can do is give you a little something extra, especially if you have a deficiency in a particular nutrient or hormone. For example, many people use vitamin supplements to give themselves a boost.

Performance supplements are particularly popular among parts of the athletic and body-building communities, where the constant push to improve is an even more intense pressure. They’re generally available as powders that can be added to drinks as well as tablets, gels, capsules and injections.

The kind of supplement you want may vary depending on your chosen sport. Weightlifters need muscle, but long-distance runners need endurance and sprinters need energy. There may also be differences depending on age and sex. If you have injuries, disabilities or other health conditions, you may also need to be more careful about any supplements you take. Research into these kinds of supplements does tend to focus on healthy young men, who are thought to be the people who take them most.

For bodybuilders, increasing muscle is a key aspect of improving their performance. As protein is the nutrient you need to build muscle, that may form the basis of the shakes or other supplements that they take either before, during or after exercise. These are fairly easy to buy over the counter.

On the other hand, supplements that claim to burn fat and help you lose weight can be particularly risky. There’s also a danger when buying online – especially from other countries that may not have the safety regulations that we do – that suppliers may add dangerous ingredients because it’s cheaper and easier, despite the risk to humans.

In general, you should be able to get everything you need to maximize your daily performance from your diet. If you do choose to try supplements, make sure you do your research first. Always buy from a trusted seller, follow any dosage instructions, and talk to your doctor, dietician, coach or trainer if you have any doubt.

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It’s not helped by the fact that everyone has different needs. While the general aim is the same – getting your body in the best shape possible – the “hows” are less simple. There are exercises to build muscle, others to lose weight, and some that improve flexibility. You need to decide what you want from your routine.

For some people, like those with injuries or medical conditions, what exercise they can do is dictated for them. For others, they have a specific goal and design all their workouts with that in mind. Other people just want a more generalized routine that gives every part of their body a chance to get better.

How effective your exercise will be is also influenced by outside factors. This is where diet comes in again because most of the energy you need for a workout is going to come from what you eat. If you want to build muscle, you need plenty of protein. If you’re trying to lose weight, you’ll be thinking about fat consumption. You’re also going to need to keep an eye on things like alcohol, smoking and quality of sleep.

You’re also going to need to work any exercise routine you do around other parts of your life, like job and family commitments. You may need to be willing to get up extra early to get to the gym or pool before work, or do some push-ups and sit-ups in your own home in the evening. Any little bit of activity can help.

So what sort of exercise routine is best for you, assuming all other factors are under control? Well, most experts say you should try to do some kind of physical activity every day, but there’s a lot of scope for variety in that simple guidance. It could be a few short but intense sessions, or it could be some longer, more moderate classes.

When it comes to strength training, you can lift weights in the gym, but even lifting shopping bags or carrying your children may be able to be considered muscle work. Equipment like resistance bands can also be used. Yoga, Pilates and Tai-Chi, which are often associated with flexibility training, also involve using and improving your physical strength.

Flexibility training in general is associated with lots of stretching, even when incorporated into a more general workout. Add it to your warmup (though not as the very first exercise – get your blood flowing first) or cool-down to make the overall routine more effective and reduce your risk of injury.

More intense cardio workouts, like circuits, spin classes and sprinting, will be shorter in length but are likely to get you even more out of breath. Practice will get you where you can exercise for longer and train harder, but you should never push yourself too far. Be aware of your own limits, and consult with your doctor if in doubt.

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Flexibility is about the range of motion in your joints and your ability to stretch and bend your muscles. Without a certain amount of flexibility, you can’t stand up, let alone walk. There’s no mobility without flexibility.

Experts say that exercises to improve your flexibility are important to your general health (https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/benefits-of-flexibility-exercises). Your balance will be better, problems like pain from a bad back can be alleviated, and you’re less likely to gain other injuries during other exercise.

So, how do we work on our flexibility without causing ourselves an injury? Stretches are the most basic form of flexibility exercise, but you need to be careful. They can cause injuries of their own if you don’t do them right. Start your exercise session with a light warmup like jogging. Once your blood is flowing a bit – after, say, ten minutes – you can give stretching a try.

This is true for any kind of fitness routine. Similarly, at the end of your session, you can incorporate stretching into your cool-down. This will make your workout more effective overall by maximizing your body’s performance and reducing the risk of pulled muscles and other injuries. You’ll then be in better shape for doing everyday tasks. You may even end up with better posture.

Then there are exercises where flexibility is the focus. Something like yoga may have a slower pace than aerobics, but that doesn’t mean it’s less intense. It still gives you the opportunity to push your body in new ways. Your muscles will end up stronger, and your balance improves every time you hold an asana for a little longer than you did last time.

As with many effective forms of exercise, doing it properly doesn’t just benefit your physical health. There’s a mental boost that comes from a good workout. It can reduce depression and anxiety, things that are far too common in our modern world. Yoga often includes periods of relaxation where you let go of outside stressors. You may also find yourself more focused and confident because of your well-designed fitness routine.

Attention to these kinds of exercises and their benefits is particularly important because as we grow older, we do lose flexibility. Some decline in muscle strength and joint mobility is inevitable, especially if you develop a condition like arthritis. There’s no cure for arthritis, but it can be mitigated, and one of the best ways to do that is to start flexibility exercises when you’re young and maintain them as long as possible.

If you have doubts or concerns about performing flexibility exercises safely, especially if you have arthritis or other conditions or injuries that affect your mobility, the best thing to do is talk to a professional. Start with your doctor or physical therapist, if you have one, and make sure that any fitness instructor you approach has proper qualifications and is willing to listen to you and work with you regarding your specific needs.

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Think about taking a single step. Your knee, ankle, and hip are all in motion. If your arm is swinging, your elbow, wrist and shoulder may be involved as well. The thing these body parts have in common is that they’re all joints that hold your skeleton together. When we talk about mobility, we mean how well you move, and the bulk of that movement comes from the joints, with muscles and ligaments also making a contribution.

Someone who has good mobility may be described as flexible. Sometimes that’s just because they naturally have a greater range of motion than other people. In other cases, it’s because they’ve worked hard at the exercises that improve mobility, such as stretching. Yoga and Pilates are two forms of exercises that pay particular attention to flexibility and stretching.

Stretching may not have the glamour of lifting the heaviest weights or running the fastest mile, but it makes your body perform better in all contexts. It’s an important part of both warming up (though it shouldn’t be the first part of your routine) and cooling down, because it means you’re less likely to injure yourself and other exercises will be more effective.

Now, you do need to be careful when stretching. Pushing too hard, especially on cold muscles, can cause damage. This is especially true if you have pre-existing injuries or conditions like arthritis that are also associated with mobility problems. In these cases, it is best to talk to your doctor or physical therapist before embarking on any exercise plan, and make sure that any fitness instructor is aware of your condition and is willing to adapt their usual program to suit your needs.

At its most basic, however, stretching is something we do every day. It’s probably the first thing you do when you get out of bed, and then again every time you stand up in the office after a long period bent over the computer. You lengthen your muscles as far as they’ll go and hold them for a moment, feeling that pressure.

You can do similar static stretches as part of your fitness routine, or try more dynamic exercises that involve stretching, such as lunging. If your mobility is poor to start with and you need a little help, blocks, straps and other equipment can be used to make it a little bit easier. With practice, you may find yourself able to go further than you ever thought possible.

Whatever kind of stretching you do and however you incorporate it into a wider exercise routine, it’s important if you want to maintain your mobility, let alone improve it. That’s how you make sure that age and injury don’t stop you from moving in the way you want for a long time to come.

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