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Increasing your range of motion
These types of exercises help keep you flexible and can improve your range of motion in a joint. They can help prevent stiffness, injury, and more damage to your joints.
Here are some ideas.
- Move each joint.
Move your joints as far as you can in each direction without causing pain, 8 to 12 times each day. Remember to do all the little joints too, such as those in your fingers.
- Do long, slow stretches.
- Stretch slowly. Stretching is not about going fast or making sudden movements.
- Don't push or bounce during a stretch
- Hold each stretch for at least 15 to 30 seconds, if you can. You should feel a stretch in the muscle, but not pain.
- Breathe out as you do the stretch. Then breathe in as you hold the stretch. Don't hold your breath.
- Try exercises that target a certain joint.
For example, if you have arthritis in your knee, try some stretches for the legs, such as the calf stretch, quadriceps stretch, and hamstring stretch.
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