Stretching! Either you love it or you don't. But there's certainly a strong mythos built up around the virtue of muscle stretching. Clients often hang their heads and say to me, "I know, I should be stretching more."

Personally, I love stretching. If you love it too, here are some tips and links to stretching exercises to help you stretch the right muscles the right way.

But if you're one of those folks who doesn't love to stretch, take heart! There's sound scientific evidence that stretching isn't really that useful in maintaining muscle health. (Click here to read a great article by Vancouver B.C. health writer and massage therapist Paul Ingraham that debunks the myth of stretching. I know--it sounds like heresy.

But new research points to the greater value of just using the muscle. Not using a muscle is one of the worst things you can do to it.

Using it--taking it through its full range of motion--has fantastic benefits both for healing injuries rapidly, and as a preventive routine.

So if you don't think of yourself as a "stretcher," but you want to heal an injury or just stay well, click here for information about how to do dynamic stretching techniques.