You know you’re getting older when you can hurt yourself just trying to get out of bed in the morning. As I’ve aged, I’ve noticed an emerging trend in my morning routine: When I first get up, I have to do so carefully. Once upon a time, I’d just bound out of bed and launch myself into the day without a second thought. If I try that now, I risk provoking morning-stiff muscles into either a cramp that can get me dancing for a few seconds or a small strain that can potentially result in pain for hours.
To counter this, I’ve taken to stretching every morning. At first, the goal was simply to avoid injury and to keep myself from “working around” stiffness as I moved through my morning routines. That very thing—the tendency to accept morning stiffness as normal and to develop habits to work around it rather than address it directly—is often the start of maladaptive and even pathological postural and movement strategies.
