Why the youthful resistance to stretching? I can clearly recall recoiling at a barked instruction to cross one leg over the other and touch my toes. My first tendency is to roll my eyes when I imagine some crew-cutted coach twirling a lanyard, extolling the merits of proper stretching. And yet as recent as last winter when I coached a high school wrestling team, with the minor exception of the crewcut, that was me! Get a good stretch in, boys—believe me—you don’t want to pull a hammy! What happened to all of our vim—our arrogance in the face of pulled muscles—that, with the exception of a tender groin here and there, proved itself one of the few victories over those officious authority figures of our teenage athletic lives?

I don’t know, and I don’t care: this creaking frame now needs stretching. Several minutes of leaning, bending and tugging before anything more vigorous than pruning the hedges is compulsory. I was ribbed for taking that long by my wrestlers until I instituted a similar daily requirement for them. Out went the lethargic partner stretches that had ineffectively occupied fifteen minutes each day. The replacement regimen took twelve minutes (kept on-pace by that obnoxious mainstay of the coaching trade—the stopwatch) and could be executed without holding hands with a teammate. It’s a neck-down treatment that focuses on the vulnerable bits but flows efficiently. The key is to avoid thinking in strict terms of named stretches, instead focusing on muscle groups. Specifically, these twelve:

Neck: Roll head in controlled circles, both directions. Gently tug head from side to side, front to back.

Shoulders: Rotate arms in controlled windmills, forward then back. Pull each arm across chest using opposite forearm.

Arms: Grasping an elbow, gently pull bent arm behind head and down back, left then right. Next grasp fingers of opposite hand; straighten both arms and pull fingers down, then back. Repeat with other arm.

Chest: Facing a wall, plant one hand at head level, arm extended. Rotate body away from wall. Repeat with other side.

Torso: With legs shoulder width apart, bend torso to side, reaching one arm down a leg and the other over head. Repeat other side. Next roll torso in wide, controlled circles.

Hamstrings: With legs more than shoulder width apart, bend at the waist and touch floor. When comfortable, alternate reaching for left then right ankle.

Quads: Standing on one foot, grasp ankle and bring it up to rear. Repeat with other leg.

Calfs: In a slightly bent-at-the-waist pushup stance, push one heel to the floor, using the other foot to brace or increase stretch. Repeat with other leg.

Groin: Squat with heels touching, balancing on toes. Place hands on floor in front of feet and use elbows and body weight to gently push out knees.

Glutes (arse): Sit with legs straight in front. Cross one leg over the other and bring knee and thigh to chest using arms. Repeat with other leg.

Back: In the same position as above, rotate torso to the side of the bent leg. Thread opposite arm between front of thigh and torso, gently increasing stretch.

Ankles: In a standing position, roll one ankle at a time over toes in controlled circles. Repeat with other foot.

For the over thirty (and older) set, stretching is a sort of chicken-or-or-the-egg scenario. I can’t stretch cold, and yet I need to stretch before warming up. The solution, I’ve found, is to do both, a sort of jumping and bending and shaking of limbs one sees runners do before a race. Once suitably unkinked, and marginally limber, stretch in earnest. I have to emphasize the time limit, though. This is not a yoga session, and stretching for much more than the one-minute-per-muscle-group regimen leaves me (literally) cold. For those who prefer metaphorical images: whether the light brightens or dims on a tire-mounted dynamo is a question of momentum.