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(beeping and peaceful music) Now we're gonna talk about two more extremely foundational subjects when it comes to proper lifting and moving techniques and that's fitness and stretching. We're gonna go back a little bit. We were all born with the natural ability to stretch, to yawn and get lots of oxygen into our bodies, and get carbon dioxide out, which removes acid from out muscles. We spoke in an earlier segment about nutrition and keeping the right amount of fluids for hydration which helps to bring the acids out of our muscle tissues after working hard and so as to allow our muscles to heal, to grow stronger, and to work properly. Stretching is one of those things that doesn't have to be taught, and you can note that by watching babies. Babies inherently know how to stretch right after you bring them home from the hospital. They yawn, they bring in lots of oxygen, they stretch really far. They inherently know how to limber their muscles, how to stretch and keep flexible. We lose that as we age, and I have a theory behind that. Part of my theory behind that is we run out of time in a day. We get into a hurry and we forget the basics of healthy living habits. Now part of this is related to this story. If you watch a child that's in the developmental stages of toddler-hood, you might see and note how they lift objects, and it doesn't matter how heavy or how light the object is, they usually will lift it properly. You'll note that a two to three year old child, if they go to pick up a balloon or a ball, will literally bend at the knees, grab the ball, hold it close to them, stand up, pivot with their feet, and then begin to carry it off. I have a theory that we lose that about age five or six with this story. At about age five or six, parents or caregivers might start to bait the children into doing tasks quickly for a reward. For example, you can go out and play with your friends as soon as your room is clean. This is gonna start to give us incentives for taking shortcuts so that we can get jobs done more quickly but not properly. We bend over incorrectly, we might pick up objects using our feet versus our squatting and grabbing it with our hands, and those types of behaviors can start a lifetime of improper postures and lifting techniques. We also start to get in a hurry when we wake up. Instead of taking the time to stretch in the morning, to limber up slowly, we begin to wake up with an alarm clock, we sleep in, we don't get enough rest at night, and so we're almost always fatigued and tired. So when the alarm clock goes off, we tend to be either just on time or even a little bit late, therefore not allowing us any time to stretch before we go into our work. And if our work requires us to possibly use those lifting techniques, we're going to be put into the same equivalency as an athlete who has to use their muscles to accomplish a sports task, and we haven't even stretched or become physically fit to accomplish that task. We're gonna go through some of the techniques from head to toe on proper stretching, and then we're gonna talk about fitness.
When your muscles are strong, stretched, flexible, and well oxygenated, the risk of injury can be greatly reduced when lifting and moving people.