By Dr Tony Setiobudi BMedSci, MBBS, MRCS, MMed (Ortho), FRCS (Ortho)
The quadriceps is made up of four muscles located on the front of the thigh between the hip and knee joints. These muscles to extend your legs and straighten the knee and flexion your hip joint. Just like any other important muscle in the body, your quadriceps can easily suffer from injury. In order to avoid the injury, you need to stretch the quadriceps muscles.
There are lots of benefits of stretching the quadriceps muscles:
- Increase flexibility and range of motion
- Improves blood circulation
- Reduces your risk on injury and stiffness
- Boosts your ability to perform during various exercises
- Increased energy
- Improve function after injury
Please start the exercise slowly. As you get stronger, you may be able to increase the intensity, frequency, or duration of your exercise. You should stop what you are doing and rest If you feel tightness or pain in your quadriceps while exercising. Do warm up your muscles before you do quadriceps exercises to avoid injury.
Dr Tony Setiobudi is an Orthopaedic & Spine Surgeon at Mount Elizabeth Hospital (Orchard), Singapore. He treats bone, joint, muscle and ligament problems in adults and children. He has a special interest in nerve compression and spine problems such as back & neck pain, scoliosis, kyphosis, spine tumor & infection, spinal cord injury, osteoporosis fracture, spinal stenosis and slipped disc.