It's not just gymnasts and ballet dancers who need to be flexible. Sports such as rock climbing, Judo, diving and cricket rely on flexibility to be performed well and reduce the risk of injury. This book explains the science behind flexibility, provides exercises and explains the effects diet has on muscle performance. Test your flexibility and follow professional step-by-step exercises to improve it. Discover how your muscles, joints, ligaments and tendons work together to enable the body to be flexible. Understand how to stretch to avoid injury and what the difference is between static, dynamic and assisted stretching. Read about sportspeople such as Tom Daly, Lynn Hill and Rafael Nadal, whose flexibility has helped them to excel. Combining sports science, nutrition, training programmes and exercises, the Training for Sport series of books is a complete guide to raising performance for children aged 9+.

Author Biography

Armed with a MacBook Air and the miracle of the Internet, Paul lives and writes at a secret location somewhere on the west coast of Europe. You can be pretty sure that keeping his feet warm under the writing table is his one-eyed surf dog, Daisy. As well as being a writer, Paul is a wanderer. He has lived in various countries - always in the high mountains, or somewhere near a good surfing beach. "Wherever I am, though, and whatever else I'm doing," he says, "I follow Ray Bradbury's advice: 'Write, every single day.'" Paul writes about many subjects, but his books are mostly to do with sports, the world's different peoples, places, and animals, or the weird and wonderful.