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+.

This book is part of a book series called Training For Sport .

There are 32 pages in this book. This book was published 2016 by Hachette Children's Group .

Paul Mason is an experienced freelance writer and editor of a variety of children's information books.

This book has the following chapters:

• 1: Bend your body
• 2: Flexibility in sport
• 3: Joint structure
• 4: Muscles
• 5: Flexibility and technique
• 6: How to stretch
• 7: Static stretching
• 8: Passive stretching
• 9: Dynamic stretching
• 10: Assisted stretching
• 11: Warming up
• 12: Warming down
• 13: Hydration and nutrition
• 14: Glossary
• 15: Further information
• 16: Index