If you suffer from leg pain, frequent leg cramp (sometimes all of a sudden), weakness when walking and also experience knee pain, ask yourself: how often you have been stretching your leg muscles?
Some people think leg pain, or leg weakness, comes from the weak leg muscles, and that the exercise will strengthen them. That is not true however. It is muscle tightness in your leg that produces muscle weakness. It causes cramps and knee pain by compressing the nerves, which also radiate pain to the knee and ankle joint.
Picture this: you climb up the mountain, or walk very long distances for the first time after a long time of inactivity. The next day you find your leg muscles hurting, and yourself weak due to a sudden overuse of your leg muscles.
Most of us tend to think “I never go to mountains, never walk long distances so I never overuse my muscle”, forgetting you have been walking and standing every single day after you were born.
Whenever you walk, your muscle exercises, and continuous stress on the muscle leads to muscle tightness which accumulates. After a while, you develop muscle cramps and pain in joints grows. Worst thing to think in that moment is that you do not exercise enough, simply because in your mind you separate dedicated exercise from daily operation of your body with is also exercise.
Of course you can always moderately exercise. Stretching before and after then exercise is good for you; without stretching (or warming up), you will harm your body more. For instance, if you regularly play golf or tennis, what will happen to your joint? Your joint will go through continuous wear and tear, and very quickly, because you are using them more than people who do not play that sport. That is why you need to do stretching, yet unfortunately, stretching of your muscle on your own reaps limited results because you are able to stretch only the superficial layer of longer muscles.
