10 things you should know about stretching

Before fitness training, one must give importance to doing warm-up or stretching exercises to prevent accidents or to enhance the output during the training. There are also a number of precautionary measures and tips to serve as guidelines when doing fitness exercises. Here are some of them.

1. To increase your flexibility and to avoid injuries, stretch before and after workout. Almost everyone knows that stretching before workout prevents injuries during the exercises, but only few people know that stretching after workout, when muscles are still warm, can increase flexibility.

2. Hold your stretching position for more than 60 seconds to increase flexibility. While holding your position for 20 seconds is enough for warm ups, holding each position for at least 60 seconds will develop the body’s flexibility.

3. Do not go into a stretching position then immediately return to the relaxed position, and do it repeatedly. This is more appropriately termed as bouncing while in a position. When stretching, hold that position for several seconds, and then slowly relax. You may do this exercise repeatedly this way. Bouncing or forcing yourself into a position during stretching can strain or damage some joints or muscles.

4. Work slowly in increments instead of immediately proceeding to doing the hardest exercise or position.

5. Make sure that you have stretched or warmed up all muscle groups. For some people, even if they have strong bodies, they tend to neglect the neck when working out of stretching. Stretching the neck muscles can be as simple as placing the palm of one’s hand against the front of the head and pushing it. Then, do the same to the sides and the back of the head.

6. Stretch regularly to continually increase your range of movements and your level of flexibility and strength.

7. Workout considering only your capabilities and not of others. Do not force yourself to do exercises that you are not yet capable of just because there are people who can do it. Increase your limits slowly. Listen to your body. There are days when your body may be too tired that you may have to consider reducing your range of motion.

8. Learn to rest. Rest in between sets and stations to make sure that the body has enough time to recover its energy. Also, it is advisable that you don’t work the same muscle groups consecutively for two days. The muscles grow during the period when you rest and not when you are working out.

9. Do aerobic exercises to strengthen your heart. Aerobic exercises are those physical activities that much oxygen for fuel. This includes cardiovascular exercises such as skipping rope, running or swimming.

10. Music may help you when you want to train for longer periods or to increase your intensity. You can use mp3 players, CD players or lightweight am radio receivers for this. Just make sure that you brought your headset with you so you wouldn’t disturb people who don’t prefer music while exercising.

Apart from preventing injuries and increasing one’s limit, it is also said that stretching is good for a tired body and also for a stressed mind and spirit.

We are Laffies Gear

Hey there!

I know we haven’t spoken in a while, we’ve missed you and we hope the start to your year has been a positive one!

We feel as if you don’t know us, so we thought it’s about time we introduce ourselves to you.

What type of shop are we?

For starters, we are a sport and lifestyle store based in Midstream Estate and we opened our doors to you in January 2020. Then Covid hit… can you believe it? So we haven’t been able to meet you all yet and can’t wait for that now that it looks like Covid is calming down a bit. *Touchwood.*

We have a range of lifestyle clothing such as Fila, NBA and Canterbury casuals. In our sporting section, we stock Wilson rackets and hard court shoes, Nike clothing, Lotto clothing and shoes, and First Ascent workout clothing. As if all that wasn’t enough, we have to mention our running shoes including ON and Hoka, some of the best running shoes on the block, right at your doorstep in Midstream Estate.

Parents, we are here to help you too. We know how frustrating it must be to travel out of the estate so your child has the correct equipment for swimming, hockey, rugby and cricket. That’s where we come in. We stock Speedo and Arena for your water babies, we also have the necessary stock needed for hockey, cricket, squash, tennis, and rugby players. We just want to help you all at the end of the day!

Where are we?

Recently we have been hearing a lot of new customers saying that they had no idea our store was there :(. It makes us sad that we aren’t able to see more of you simply because you don’t know where we are. Well, I’m sure anyone that knows or lives in Midstream knows where the biltong shop is at the square… we are right next to it. Our employees are blessed with that beautiful biltong smell every time those doors open.

If you don’t live in the area, we are at the square at Midstream in Midstream Estate, Olifantsfontein, so come pay us a visit! Here’s a pin for you

You never know what you might stumble on 😉

We hope to see you soon!

Laffies Gear 🙂

Is your computer your friend?

The old cliché, “If you want a friend, get a dog” still stands in the 21st Century. It is well established in the medical community that animals can do much to extend the human life span as well as improve the quality of life. Don’t live on or vicariously through your computer.

A pastor once said his job was to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. Thus we have the difference between a real live pet and an inanimate electro-mechanical object – in this case the personal computer. The pet comforts while the computer, improperly used and/or over used, is a thief and a murderer.

Besides, the computer, especially if you run a Microsoft Operating System and Microsoft production software, requires much more maintenance than does a pet. This alone is enough to drive most users’ blood pressure through the roof. How many times do you suspect that needs to happen before it begins to take a toll on the human body? It is even more aggravating than the days when we only received three (3) snowy channels on a small black and white television and each channel required another trip outside in the
rain, in the cold, in the snow, in the heat to adjust the huge antenna attached to a corner of the house which spilled the rain directly into your face as you looked up to see in which direction the antenna was pointing. If you were lucky someone was in the house calling to you when you got the best picture.

You know what I am talking about… like when your computer locks up with a box popping up on the monitor’s screen saying it needs to restart now, and won’t let you do anything else until you acquiesce and reboot. There goes your last few minutes of work. Another blood pressure jump! It sure is for the Tennessee Mountain Man!

Father may know best, but mother knows even better and she always made the children set across the room from the TV concerned about it ruining their vision. Now that same mom allows the children and grandchildren to set on top of a twenty-one (21) inch monitor, even closer to a laptop, and play games ad infinitum. The result being more and more of our children are wearing glasses and contact lenses at younger and younger ages.

Mom also insisted that little ones spend much more time outside playing in the yard than obsessing over the magic box in the corner, and the children were healthier. There were fewer cases of childhood diabetes and hardly any childhood obesity.

Children learned skills greater than cheating x-box and PSP, and mom and pop never heard of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. The computer man and everyone else is seemingly required to work on or at computer consoles to some extent these days. As a result, the entire family now either suffers from a computer related ailment or is at real risk of developing one.

With the advent and prevalence of the personal computer and gaming gizmos, the heart, which is a muscle, gets little or no exercise. As if the TV did not create enough couch potatoes resulting in what amounts to atrophy of the heart muscle, the PC seems to have claimed the remainder of man.

A computer cannot hold you on cold nights or enjoy a walk hand-n-hand with you in the moonlight. It cannot comfort you when you are sick or improve your mood when you are sad. It cannot feed you when you are hungry nor give you a drink when you are thirsty… at least not yet. The PC cannot yet carry on a civil or reasoned conversation. Irrespective of one’s addictions and all the attractions on the internet, it is not true social interaction and it certainly cannot satisfy the libido try as some may.

Used improperly it can and does drive wedges between husbands and wives, and between children and parents. Like a drug, once addicted, and it is addictive, it can cost one his job and it has. Like a nosy gossiping neighbor or ticked off lover, it has the propensity to tell the world (friend and foe alike) everything it knows (both good and bad) about you. And, in case you didn’t know, there are hackers from people with malicious intentions, to your employer, to Microsoft, to insurance companies, to financial institutions, to the government who have the ability to ask your computer what it knows about you whenever they wish. And, your computer… your friend in whom you confide everything, like a spurned lover is more than willing to betray her paramour and spill her guts literally.

My computer… my friend? With such friends who needs enemies?

If you need help deciding which activities to partake in be assured that the team at Laffies Gear will easily help you get into gear. Contact Laffies Gear at 081 554 8777 today so that they can assist you.

Laffies Gear is a sports shop in Midstream Estate and cater for the sporting community within the estate.

Email address: sales@laffies.co.za,

Website: www.laffies.co.za