You have to stretch your leg muscles. Learn how to massage your feet at home

The ability to do the splits is an indicator of excellent flexibility. You can do the splits during gymnastic exercises, dance classes, or simply for personal benefit. To learn how to do the splits, start doing stretching exercises regularly. Incorporate toe touching into your workout regimen to significantly improve your flexibility. Dynamic stretches, such as wall leg raises, will also stretch your thigh and calf muscles. Preparing for the splits will take several weeks, so be patient and monitor your body condition to avoid injury. Stop stretching if you feel pain.

Steps

Toe touching exercises

Perform the traditional toe touch. Sit on a gymnastics mat and stretch your legs in front of you. Lean forward and try to reach your feet. Grab them and hold in this position for 30 seconds. Then slowly return your upper body to an upright position. Do as many repetitions as you can.

If you can't reach your feet, extend your arms as far as possible.
If you want to increase the difficulty of the exercise, point your toes up and try touching your toes. Try to ensure that your torso does not bend during the exercise.

Perform one toe touch. Sit upright on the mat and extend both legs in front of you. Bend one leg so that your foot rests on your groin. Then extend your arms in the direction of your extended leg. When you touch your foot, hold this position for 30 seconds. Switch legs and repeat the exercise.
- While bending, the knee of the bent leg will most likely begin to press into the floor.
Do the butterfly exercise. Sit on the mat, spread your legs apart and bend your knees, and bring your feet together. Slowly begin to pull your heels towards your groin. At the same time, try to lower your knees to the floor. Begin to slowly lean forward. Stay in this position until you feel a stretch in the muscles of your thigh and calf.

Bend forward with your legs open. Sit straight on the mat and spread your legs out to the sides. Spread them as wide as possible, but not to the limit. Then begin to slowly extend your arms forward from your torso. Following your arms, begin to slowly tilt your torso towards the floor. Stop when you feel tension in your thigh, calf, or back muscles. Stay in this position for 30 seconds, then return to the original position. Do a few more approaches.
- To increase the load, try to reach your ankles as you bend your torso. As a result, you should be able to lower your face to the floor.
Hold each pose until you feel tension. Changing stretching positions quickly can cause injury to muscles and joints. Instead, slowly move in and out of a pose. Hold the position until you feel a slight burning sensation in the muscles. Typically, this sensation appears 30 seconds after stretching.
- Hold the position for as long as your body and fitness level allows. For some people, 30 seconds is enough, while others will have to hold the same position for a minute.
Stop stretching immediately if you feel pain. While performing this or that exercise, you may feel a slight burning sensation in the muscles. This type of pain is quite normal and to be expected with regular stretching exercises. If you feel deep, sharp or stabbing pain, immediately return to your original position. If you continue to stretch when you are in severe pain, you will damage your joints.
- Pain during stretching usually comes from the joints in the knees or hips.
Try to stretch every few days. No matter how much you want to stretch every day, it can lead to muscle fatigue. It's better to let your muscles and joints recover. To do this, stretch and prepare to do the splits every few days. Typically, 30 minutes of stretching, including a warm-up, will be sufficient.

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Helps fight pain by reducing Myofascial Pain Syndrome: A Treatment Review activation of pain receptors in muscles.
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Speeds up The beneficial effects of massage therapy for insomnia in postmenopausal women☆ blood flow in muscles and tissues, improves lymph outflow.

When not to massage your feet

Avoid massage if you have:

Skin diseases.
Skin damage: wounds, burns, frostbite.
Acute inflammatory process.
Thrombosis.
Phlebeurysm.
Tendency to bleed.

How to choose cream or oil for massage

There are several classic options: creams “Alice”, “Nega”, “Ballet”. They have been used for a very long time, are cheap, do not cause problems and provide good gliding of the hands on the skin. Johnson's Baby clear oil will also work. It is used even for babies, which means it does not cause allergies or irritation.

If you prefer natural oils, choose those that do not clog your pores too much:

hemp;
argans;
almond;
avocado;
jojoba;
grape seeds.

You can also add aromatic ones to them: for 10 grams of base oil, 4 drops of essential oil.

How to give a foot massage to yourself or someone else

Life hacker has collected techniques from classic massage: it relaxes muscles well and improves blood circulation.

Some movements will be difficult to use for self-massage - just skip them and do what is comfortable to do.

Typically, massage therapists spend 30–60 seconds on each movement. But you can adjust the time based on your sensations.

Warming up

For about a minute, stroke your leg from the calf to the thigh, grabbing the gluteal muscles, and back.

Foot massage

Rub the instep of your foot with your thumb from toe to heel.

Make circular movements with both palms.

Massage of thighs and buttocks

Rub your thigh with your palm in a circular motion from the knee to the buttock.

Make a “nettle”: slide your hands alternately up and down.

When your leg warms up, try tapping it with the edge of your palm or with your palm cupped.

Finish the massage with the stroking you started with.

This collection contains videos from which the movements are taken. You can simply copy the entire work of massage therapists.

How to self-massage your feet using balls and rollers

Massage using a tennis ball or special massage rollers and balls provides a deep effect on muscles and connective tissue, warms up and relaxes clogged muscles.

Massage rollers can be bought at a sports store or ordered on AliExpress. There you can also find massage balls, single or double, or simply buy tennis balls.

Remember a few rules for self-massage using massage rollers and balls:

Roll your body slowly.
Don't roll your joints.
Spend at least two minutes on each muscle group.
If you feel pain and severe discomfort, reduce the pressure. In addition, if the pain is felt in a specific point, you can not act on it directly, but roll out nearby areas.

Massage the front of the thigh (quadriceps)

Place your hands on your forearms, place the roller under the front of your legs and lean your whole body onto it. Roll the front of your legs from knee to hip.

Back thigh massage

Roll the back of your leg from knee to hip. To enhance the effect, cross your legs.

Inner thigh massage

Bend your leg and place it under your inner thigh.

Gluteal muscle massage

Sit on the roller, place your hands on the floor. Place the shin of your left leg on the knee of your right and roll out your right gluteal muscle. Then switch legs and roll out the left side.

Calf massage

Sit on the floor, place a roller under your calves, lift yourself up on your hands and roll out your muscles. To enhance the effect, cross your legs - this will increase the pressure on the roller.

Foot massage

Take off your shoes and step on the massager. Roll it under your foot, pressing down with your body weight. You can use the same massager or buy special models for the feet.

The muscles of the body constantly need training because they are directly involved in the functioning of the musculoskeletal system. When muscle tissue works, blood flow to it increases, which means that the amount of oxygen and various nutrients increases. If it has already happened that you have to wear a cast, then the load decreases or stops altogether, and the muscle cells atrophy. A very important point in the treatment process is the restoration of normal functions after a leg fracture. This article will talk about how to develop a leg. This is, of course, a difficult task, but doable.

Main tasks during rehabilitation

Eliminate muscle atrophy and vascular changes.
Increase leg muscle tone.
Improve muscle elasticity.
Develop mobility in joints.
Fight stagnation.
Increase physical activity.

The tasks, at first glance, are not so difficult, but they are simple for a healthy person. And for a person with an injured leg, completing each step is a huge task.

How to develop a leg after a fracture

Massage, physiotherapy, rubbing. It is required to restore the previous muscle activity as much as possible. You need to rub your feet with cedar oil. Massage after a fracture is very important. Any touching, stroking, kneading movements increase muscle tone, thus accelerating the healing process. Magnetic therapy sessions have a beneficial effect. Use warming procedures (wax, ozokerite).
Baths with additives. During the rehabilitation process, you must take baths, adding sea salt and various medicinal herbs to them. To prepare such a bath, use 100 grams of salt for every liter of water. Horsetail baths will be useful, since horsetail helps with circulatory problems and affects swelling in fractures.
Physical exercise. They will help solve the problem of muscle atrophy in the best possible way. The exercises can be done at home; you don’t need a trainer for this. No special knowledge is required to perform the exercises. Calculate the load correctly. You should not perform all the necessary exercises in one day if your leg bothers you greatly.
Special diet. Stick to proper, and most importantly nutritious, nutrition. Consume foods that contain sufficiently large amounts of calcium and silicon. During the rehabilitation period, cottage cheese, cow's milk, fish, soybeans, bran bread, hazelnuts, green vegetables, and sesame will be especially useful. Replenish silicon from raspberries, radishes, currants, pears. Vitamins C, D, E will be especially useful during this period.

Leg development exercises

First: walk as much as possible, fully leaning on the injured leg.
Second: while standing or sitting, perform rotational movements with the foot. Start the exercise a week after removing the cast.
Third: swing your leg. Stand near a chair, holding onto its back. Raise the injured leg up and hold it in the air. Repeat 10 times. And do the same for the healthy leg. An alternative to the same exercise is to move your leg to the side.
Fourth: standing near a chair, hold on to the back. Slowly rise onto your toes and lower onto your heels. If it’s easy, then you need to do the exercise on one leg.
Fifth: lie down on the floor and make swings with cross movements.

After a month of doing these exercises, you can start doing exercises on simulators. Working on a training bike will be very effective, but pedal at a slow pace and initially for no more than 10 minutes.

Even while in a cast, you need to do exercises; you can start a day after the injury. Wiggle your toes and tense and relax your muscles, including the muscles in your cast.

Now you know how to develop a leg after a fracture or serious injury, what exercises you need to do, what products to give preference to. Get well soon!

Good tone and elasticity of the calf muscles is not only the ability to move freely over long distances, but also reduces the risk of inflammatory processes in the ankle joint and superficial veins of the leg (varicose veins).

Stretching exercises

To make your legs not only beautiful, but also healthy, it is not enough just to load your muscles. You should devote 10% of your strength training time to stretching. Exercises to stretch the calf muscles can be done at home.

What are the benefits of stretching?

During tonic and clonic tension, muscle fibers contract. With constant tonic load, the striated muscle fiber lengthens, loses volume, but its strength and endurance increase. There is no definitive data on the speed of contraction; it all depends on the type of training.

In clonic tension, when contractions are frequent and short-lived, the fiber shortens and becomes larger in volume. This effect is especially visible if the load is given every other day and with low weight.

An increase in muscle volume gradually leads to circulatory failure or mechanical narrowing of blood vessels. This results in a large number of stress fractures and ligament tears.

To reduce the harmful effects of muscle load on blood vessels, it is necessary to do exercises to stretch the calf muscles.

Stretching has a complex effect:

Relaxes.
Prevents sore throat.
Improves blood circulation and lymphatic drainage.
Increases muscle elasticity.
Reduces rest period.
Develops muscle functionality.
Reduces the risk of injury (tendon ruptures, cramps)

Each workout should end with relaxation and stretching of the areas where the load was given. Otherwise, injuries and pain cannot be avoided.

Stretching the calf muscles can be used to reduce the volume of the lower leg. It’s really possible to do this, you just need to choose the right complex.

How to stretch your calf muscle

Stretching exercises

You need to do the maximum number of exercises to counteract the strength of the lower leg muscles.

Function of the calf muscles:

Flexion of the foot.
Rotation of the foot.
Movement of the big toe, etc.

Based on this, you can choose several exercises that are aimed not only at stretching the lower leg, but also at relaxing it.

How to stretch your calf:

Fold. Standing position, legs together. Bend over, keeping your knees straight.
Crease on the floor. Sitting position, legs together in front. Lean forward, keeping your knees straight. If you can’t reach your toes the first time, bend your knees and take your toes in your hands of the same name. Then slowly straighten them, holding your toes in your hands.
Checkbox. Sitting position, legs extended forward. With both hands at the ankle joint, take your leg and lift it towards your nose. It is important to keep the knee joint straight. In this case, the stretching effect can extend not only to the lower leg, but also to the biceps femoris (flexor of the leg). Repeat the same movements with the other leg. The movements should be smooth and cause a slight, pleasant pain in the working area.
The wall bars exercise is one of the most effective for working on the lower leg. Stand with both feet on the lowest step. Lower your heels to the floor as much as possible and rise on your toes as high as possible. Repeat the exercise as many times as possible. This exercise can be used for stretching, pumping, and relaxation.
Walking on toes. If you walk and stand on your toes for several days, you can easily increase the volume of your lower leg. And if you combine this exercise with stretching, you can easily increase calf strength and reduce the volume of the back of the lower leg.
Standing flag. Place your right foot forward on a stable object at a height that does not cause discomfort. The foot should point straight up. Try to place your stomach on your thigh. This exercise involves the back of the leg and the biceps femoris muscle, which plays an important role in the flexibility of the lower limb. When your stomach rests effortlessly on your thigh, you can use your hand to straighten your foot at the ankle joint and enhance the effect of the exercise.

It is best to start stretching after a good warm-up, then the muscles will be more elastic and pliable.

How to warm up before stretching:

Run. It is best to run at a slow pace, which will allow you to withstand the load without a break for 15-20 minutes. This warming up will also help you lose weight.
Walking. It should be intense and rhythmic, at least 10-20 minutes.
Jumping. A good way to not only warm up, but also strengthen your lower legs. If you do not want to have pumped up shins, you need to stretch them very well after jumping.

Criteria for readiness to stretch:

Feeling of heat in the body.
The ankle joint is hot to the touch.
You've sweated a lot.

Exercises for stretching the calf muscles at home are quite simple. It’s enough to select the desired video or photo complex and do it daily.

Don't forget about warming up. If you do not warm up enough before stretching, you can easily get injured (rupture, sprain, tear).

Exercises to relax the calf muscles

After training, you need to relax your legs well.

Rest exercises:

Lying on your back, raise your legs and arms up. Shake your limbs for 1-2 minutes.
Standing position, legs together. Take a step forward, keeping your back knee straight. Bending the front leg, transfer the weight of the body until a characteristic sensation occurs along the back surface of the shin of the back leg.

Massage to soften the calf muscles

A good method of relaxation is massage. Slow rubbing movements towards the nearest lymph nodes improve blood circulation, prevent sore throat (delayed pain syndrome) and promote muscle relaxation.

Massage is also used to stretch the calf muscle before exercise.

Stretching the calf muscles, massage and proper distribution of power load during training are effective prevention of diseases of the lower leg and ankle joint.

Most beginner or amateur athletes never pay much attention to warming up, but this is precisely what is needed for the necessary warming up of all important muscles. During warm-up, a reaction occurs in the muscles, due to which the temperature of a certain area of the body increases and rises.

When warming up, the blood is enriched with oxygen and the heartbeat accelerates. And the body creates the necessary supply of oxygen, which allows you to limit your muscles from various injuries during training. To put it simply, thanks to the warm-up you will warm up your body, and after the workout you will not feel the unpleasant symptoms of muscle pain.

A good warm-up before training will protect the body from overload and prepare it for intense training. Warming up will reduce the high risk of injuries, sprains, sprains and fractures due to the fact that your body will be warmed up. Of course, it will not add muscle mass to you, but it can protect you from injury during exercise.

There are a number of exercises to perform during warm-up, for example, it can be exercise on exercise bikes, treadmills, such warm-ups will increase your blood pressure and warm up your muscles. For people involved in bodybuilding, a popular warm-up includes exercises with dumbbells and, often in this way, they warm up all parts of the body in turn. There is also a special warm-up before running.

Before starting the exercise, you should perform a warm-up approach for a specific muscle, this is done so that the muscle gets used to the given movement.

The more stress you put on your body, the more important the warm-up exercises become.

The quality is also affected by the time at which you study. For example, in the morning your body is very sluggish and you will have to exercise much longer before achieving results than if you exercise in the evening.

Injuries among bodybuilders usually occur for two reasons: insufficient warm-up and incorrect technique for performing the exercise.

In addition, age has a huge influence on the quality of training; the older a person is, the better he must ensure that his body is as protected as possible from injury. After all, what young people can get away with can have a detrimental effect on the body of older comrades.

Basic warm-up exercises

The basic stance is straight, arms at your sides, feet shoulder-width apart, chin raised, muscles and joints relaxed. Remember this foundation, without it it will be very difficult to start. Got it? Now we move on to the process of warming up each individual muscle complex. Low start, let's go.

Stretch your neck muscles

You need to turn your head to the right and left several times, while trying to prolong this turn as long as possible.

Head tilts. While in the main stance, smoothly tilt your head forward and return it to the starting position. There is no need to shrug your shoulders.

Stretch the muscles of the shoulder girdle and arm muscles

While in the main stance, we rotate our shoulders clockwise, and then vice versa. We repeat this exercise several times.

While in the main stance, we begin to shrug our shoulders, inhaling and exhaling air sharply as high as possible, lowering our shoulders just as sharply.

Swing your arms a few times. Starting with your arms above your head and moving them down to your sides and crossing them under your chest.

Stretch the muscles of the chest and back

Exercises to raise your arms forward from the main stance. Take a deep breath, raise your arms above your head, exhale, returning your arms to the starting position.

Bring your hands together behind your back. Inhale, raising them as high as you can and return to the starting position without leaning forward.

Having taken the basic stance, put your arms in front of you and begin to spread them to the sides, bringing your shoulder blades together and inhaling as you do so, return them to their original position as you exhale.

Stretch your torso muscles

Twisting exercise. Standing straight, arms to the sides, legs again shoulder-width apart, make turns with the torso, while keeping the pelvis motionless.

We do the same twisting, only with our elbows bent. Use the fingers of your left hand to grab your left shoulder, and the fingers of your right hand to grab your right shoulder. And also turn your torso from side to side.

Torso rotation. Place your hands on your hips. And keeping your pelvis motionless, lean forward, then returning to the starting position, then do the same, but leaning to the left, right and back.

With your feet wide apart, bend your knees and lean forward so that your torso is parallel to the floor. Place your hands in a lock above your head. And alternately touch your left elbow to your right knee, and your right elbow to your left knee.

Stretch your lower back muscles

Bend forward. Standing in a basic stance, tuck your chin to your chest and begin to bend as low as possible. Next, without changing your stance, turn your body to the left, also pressing your chin and bending over, straighten up, and repeat this, turning to the right.

Exercises for regular warm-up of the torso muscles are ideal for warming up the lower back.

Stretch your leg muscles

With your left hand on your waist, lift your left leg as high as you can. After this, bend this leg at the knee and straighten it. Do this several times, and repeat the same exercise, but with your right leg.

Place your emphasis on the floor on both arms and your left leg, lift your right leg and bend it at the knee. Begin to bend and straighten your left leg while keeping it flat on the floor. Repeat this exercise several times and change the position of your legs.

Stretch your pelvic muscles

Standing and maintaining balance with your right hand, swing your left leg forward, then back, then change position and do the exercise again.

Taking a wide stance. Hands on the belt, feet parallel to each other. Do deep lunges in different directions alternately, without lifting your feet from the floor and without bending your torso forward.

Stretch the ankle joint

Holding on to something for balance, lift your left leg and then your right leg to rotate your feet first in one position and then in the other. Do this exercise several times with different legs.

Stretch your calf muscles

Keeping your balance, rise onto the toes of both feet. And repeat this exercise with your toes turned outward and with your toes turned inward.

It is also worth remembering that when moving to heavy weights in your training, you need to perform the exercise with a lighter weight for each part of your body to prepare it for a large load.

That's all, now you know how to properly warm up before training. To learn the material, you can save the link to this article and refer to it if necessary. This is where we will complete our training, come back, next time we will look at other useful information for athletes.