I Could Never Stick to My Stretching Routine. Then I Found This App.

Illustration of the Bend app displayed on a smartphone screen and an illustrated brown frame with a green background.

When I sit down between Christmas and New Year’s Eve to write my resolutions for the coming year, I’m always careful to set realistic goals for myself. They’re usually a series of easily achievable objectives — relatively simple stuff like drinking more water or not letting dishes sit in the sink overnight.

For 2024, the list was short: floss nightly, maintain a skin-care routine, and stretch daily. The first two were easy to stick with, but I struggled to keep up the habit of stretching.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to stretch. After years of spending workdays hunched over a keyboard, my body was practically begging for it. My lower back throbbed, my shoulders ached, my neck was a perpetually coiled spring.

Yet stretching consistently felt like a chore. It wasn’t as simple as flossing or washing my face; there was too much guesswork involved. What stretches should I do? How long should my stretching sessions last? Should I target one area of my body or the whole thing? I felt overwhelmed by everything I didn’t know about stretching — and I basically gave up altogether before it was even time to flip the calendar to February.

Unsurprisingly, my achy body only got achier as the year progressed. By the end of October, my social media algorithm, likely tipped off by my frequent Google searches (“relieve lower back pain how?”), started serving me Instagram ads for Bend, a stretching and flexibility app that immediately caught my attention. Intrigued and ready to revive my failed resolution, I clicked through to the app via Instagram and signed up for the weeklong free trial.



from Wirecutter: Reviews for the Real World https://ift.tt/zN8c9ie
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