Dealing with tightness from exercising

Exhausted and tight? First step is to make sure you're eating and drinking enough. If you're not giving your body enough nutrition to recover, it won't, and you'll start getting that constant feeling-like-death thing going on, which is not good.

Then make sure you're not trying to do too much too fast. Pushing yourself is good, pushing yourself into an injury is not. Take a back off week and see if that helps smooth things out.

For tight, the foam roller/tennis ball seems to help more than stretching. Doing some really light exercise, like taking a long slow walk can help too, depending on where the tightness is.

I second the foam roller/tennis ball approach. If you get a foam roller I'd recommend the denser ones. They may be more uncromfortable initially as it's like taking a baking roller pin to your muscle fibers but it will get less painful after a few sessions. The softer rollers have a tendency to break down after a while so I think they have less benefit.

The other thing that I have found to be very effective is yoga. As I age I've found I've gotten increasingly tighter so a few months ago I decided to check out some yoga classes and they really work great. Hot yoga classes are especially helpful since the warmer environment improves your pliability so you can sink into the stretches better. If you don't have access to yoga classes you can still find plenty of information online and do them at home.

Check out http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-682/Yoga-Poses-for-Beginners-Howto-Tips-Benefits-Images-Videos.html

The Restorative poses link on this page has some very easy poses that really help out a lot, like Child's Pose, Happy Baby. etc. The Core poses link has Cat and Cow. The Standing Yoga Pose link has Downward Dog, Triangle, Reverse Warrior. etc. There are poses for every body part, some that combine strength with stretching but most are very accessible for beginners and easy to replicate. I'd recommend holding the poses for at least 30 seconds to a minute.