(WISH) — If you think stretching is only for athletes, you’re wrong.

Experts say stretching is good for everyone, and a 2023 study found that adults who stretched five days a week had a 20% lower risk of dying over the next nine years than those who didn’t.

Experts shared which stretches you should start doing today and why.

If you go straight from sitting to exercising, you could be setting yourself up for a serious injury.

Tatyana Siddeeq, lead flexologist for StretchLab Winter Park in Florida, said, “Everybody needs to stretch. It’s really important to help your body stay mobile. It helps with recovery. It helps to prevent injury and just helps you live a better quality of life.”

You shouldn’t just stretch when you feel tight.

Caitlin Ann Cheruka, clinical assistant professor at the University of Central Florida, said, “When we don’t stretch, we will lose our flexibility and over time that’s gonna limit our mobility and our range of motion.”

That range of motion can be lost in 4-8 weeks. However, you don’t want to stretch to the point of pain.

Siddeeq said, “If you’re going from a scale of zero to 10, you want to get to maybe that seven mark. Once you get to that nine, 10 mark, that is when there’s a greater chance of injury.”

Siddeeq recommended that everyone do the forward fold, which opens your back and loosens up your hamstrings and calves.

If you sit a lot every day, Cheruka recommended stretching the hip flexor. She also recommended targeting every muscle group, so you should also do a hamstring stretch, a chest opener, a quadriceps stretch, and a shoulder stretch.

One more reason to stretch, Cheruka said: “Stretching can help improve our cardiovascular health, which is super important because we know that cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide.”

Finally, when is the best time to stretch? Cheruka said before a sport, after a sport, and any day you don’t do a sport. In other words, whenever you can.

If you’re considering trying stretching to fix your back pain, Cheruka recommended strengthening exercises instead. Stretching may only provide temporary relief. To help back pain, you should focus on developing core strength.

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