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This article is from the Big Folks Sports and Activities FAQ, by sharon@ecs.ox.ac.uk (Sharon Curtis) with numerous contributions by others.

A3-19) Fat people and Stretching

There are a lot of different stretching exercises, for stretching
different muscles of the body. The usual aim of stretching exercises
are to gently stretch the muscles to warm them up or wind them down.
The positions are of the "stretch and hold" in a stationary position,
rather than "bouncing" the muscles.

As a fat person, or as a person who has a slightly different shape
(for example, long or short arms), you may find that you can't do
some of the movements as pictured. What to do is to use common sense
and some knowledge of the body to find other ways to stretch the
area in question.

Quad stretch:
One exercise to stretch the quads (some of the muscles in the thighs)
is to grab your ankle from behind and pull up. Some fat folks have
problems with grabbing the ankle, because they can't reach. One possible
solution is to grab the ankle from a sitting position on the floor, and
then lie on one side to stretch. Another way to grab the ankle from
a standing position is to use a wall behind you: put the foot you intend
to grab on the wall behind you, then use the friction of the wall to
help lift your leg relative to your hand grabbing the ankle, as you
lower yourself slightly by bending the leg you're standing on.

Inner thigh stretch:
A standard way to do this is with one knee forward, other leg back,
hands outside feet, however you may find that the legs squish against
the stomach. One way to try to get round this is to put just one hand
on the ground, the other keeping the leg parallel.

The exercise involving sitting on the floor, leaning forward and holding
onto the toes might be difficult, as the tummy can get in the way.
Try instead sitting on the floor, legs apart, doing one leg at a time.
That way, the stomach has space in the direction of the floor.

Use common sense. Don't twist joints such as knees into strange positions,
try to keep them parallel. Don't compress your belly so that you can't
breathe. Don't push yourself to assume positions that don't feel right to
you.

An excellent web site that tells you all you ever need to know about stretching
(and more!) is http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/papers/rma/stretching_toc.html

 

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