Stretch!

When you first get up in the morning, your muscles and soft tissues are tight. In fact, at that time your muscles are generally about 10 percent shorter than their normal resting length. As you move around, they stretch to their normal length. Then when you start to exercise, your muscles stretch even more to about 10 percent resting length. This means that you have a 20 percent change in muscle length from the time you get out of bed until your muscles are well warmed up.

According to the basic laws of physics, muscles work more efficiently when they are longer; they can exert more force with less effort. This means, too, that longer muscles are much less prone to injury.

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