This is not necessarily a fitness question persay, but i figured this would be the community to ask. About 3 months ago i started a new job, a factory job, where i'm constantly pushing and lifting tonnes of weight daily. i've gotten used to it, i don't feel nearly as sore as i did when i started, the only thing is how i feel when i wake up.
you see, when i first wake up the first thing i notice is how stiff i am, literally it feels as though each of my individual muscles has turned into cold rubber. And the cracks! every time i move now something or another pops or cracks in any given part of my body. Suffice to say none of this is painful, just... uncomfortable. It's not like they gave me a "how to adapt your body to suddenly doing manual labor 101" pamphlet when i joined, so what exactly should i be doing different? Or is this just a normal phenomenom that i'm not used to?
I used to have this problem. For me the main fix was making sure I ate enough fish and got my daily need for omega 3 fatty acid. An added improvement came a few months later when I started doing daily stretches and flexibility exercises.
Can you say more about the stretching and flexibility exercises? I need to find a good routine. I'm tired of feeling stiff...
I've had good luck simply searching for "stretche for x issue". Probably the biggest thing is if you can't do a stretch fully, don't force it. Most stretches will have modifications you can do to make them easier.
This page from the Mayo Clinic is a good starting point
I can’t find the video I got them from. But they were very standard. Looking online for exercises that cover the neck, back, shoulders, arms and knees ought to get you there. I suspect anything will do as long as we stick to it for more than a week or two (easier said than done)