Flexible and able to bend easily; or to prepare muscles for activity by stretching and warming up.
Possibly from Old Norse or Scandinavian languages. The word emerged in English around the 1600s for flexibility, with the verb form 'to limber up' becoming common in sports language in the 1900s.
The phrase 'limber up' became sports language because gymnasts and dancers discovered that gradual warming makes muscles perform better and prevents injury—ancient athletes did this intuitively, but modern sports science proved why flexibility matters so much for performance.
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