The continuing misfunctions we suffer in our world raise the stress levels we endure. We use exercise to help our bodies cope. Thousands of muscle contractions are performed daily in the gyms, as reps are pounded out and muscles strengthen.
However, often missing is the stretching that will counterbalance the shortening of muscle fibres, the lengthening of soft tissues such as muscles, tendons and ligaments.
The last two mentioned tissues connect muscle and bone, helping stabilise the body, but they are less elastic than muscle tissue, but they, too, are involved in stretching activities.
Flexibility, a major component of fitness, is defined as a measure of a joint’s ability to move through its full range of motion. As in all muscle work, the ‘use it, or lose it’ rule applies. Without regular flexibility training, muscles shorten and lose their elasticity. Because our daily range of physical movements seldom includes postures that fully extend, rather than just contract, working muscles, the greater majority of us, from childhood on, grow inflexible and less supple. This results in a restricting of the range of mobility that should be available to the body.
Well-toned muscles are not only stronger through their repetitive contractile ability to overcome resistance, but flexible, so that they are capable of relaxing and lengthening, fully enabling joints to move through their extended range of movement.
As we age, because of the general reduction in activity levels, there is a decrease in circulation and a breakdown of collagen fibres, which further combine to limit one’s flexibility.
By integrating stretching routines into your regular schedule, enhanced flexibiity can develop and the muscle-atrophy caused by disuse can be reversed.
Stretching lengthens muscles, tendons and ligaments to improve mobility of joints. It also encourages the circulation of the blood, so that energy-sustaining oxygen is supplied to the working muscles and waste products,such as toxins and lactic acid, are more readily eliminated from from the muscle cells.
All physical performance is enhanced by supple muscles and joints, which move freely and fully, creating less danger of injury from tears and cramp. Stretching relieves muscle tension and stiffness, and therefore helps decrease stress by enabling the body to relax.
For optimum fitness, all physical fitness programs should integrate stretching components into routines. I prefer to stretch out the muscle group I have just worked, before moving on to another body part, then stretching those particular muscles after that section of my workout.An hour’s hard workout, followed by a desultory 5 minutes of stretch isn’t good enough!
Understanding the tissues involved in stretching and the body’s inherited reflexes that assist them in the complex process of maintaining optimum extensibility, should make stretching a safer and more rewarding practice. Muscle tissue possesses not only contarctile properties, but the ability to relax or lengthen fully. The actual muscle fibres do not stretch much, but the connective tissue that envelops the strands of muscle fibres is able to lengthen, under certain conditions, allowing two different sorts of stretch to occur in the connective tissue.
An elastic stretch is one in which the tissue lengthens and then springs back to its original length, as soon as the pressure of the stretch is relieved.
A plastic stretch is one in which the lengthening of the tissue is maintained over a longer period, so that the connective tissue grows more malleable and flexible. The latter is a more adequate stretch, as the intention is to develop muscles that perform ably because of the quality of their flexibility is more established and permanent. Compare stretching a cold elastic band suddenly and forcibly, with a heated band, more slowly and extensively. The cold band will stretch less and snap back with more force, or, if pulled too far, snap, whereas the warm band will lengthen further and return to its normal length with less explosive consequences.
Stretching cold muscles places them at risk from injury. Warm up muscles first, with moderate and rhythmical movement, before muscles are given short, preparatory stretches for the work to follow, or stretched more fully after full contracting routines.
To protect the tissues from needless injury, the body is endowed with myotatic reflexes that are activated automatically whenever we attempt to perform self-destructive movements that place the muscles at risk.These reflexes take two forms: the stretch refex and the inverse stretch reflex.
The Stretch Reflex:
This stemsfrom the muscle spindles that are specialised muscle fibres within the muscle. These give continuous feedback to the brain to let it know what is happening within the muscle and allow for the coordinated and smooth movement of muscle. When a muscle is stretched too hard or fast, the spindles send a message by way of the automatic reflex back to the spinal cord. It instantaneously returns the command to the muscle to contract so that it protects itself against damage from excessive stretching. Ballistic stretching, involving bouncing or jerking actions, using momentum to lengthen muscle, should be avoided by most exercisers, as it is the least effective and most risky form of stretching. This form often results in microscopic tearing of muscle tissue. When this heals, scar tissue forms, which is non-elastic, making the muscle less, rather than more, flexible.
The Inverse Stretch Reflex:
This reflex is central to our ability to promote flexibility. Under certain controlled conditions, the muscle tissue has the power to lengthen and relax,with no risk of damage to the fibres. The Golgi tendon organs (GTOs) are the sensory receptors in the tendons connecting the muscle to bone. These give the muscles information, producing the inverse stretch reflex that seems, at face value, to act in a way opposite to the muscle spindle reflex described above. If the muscle is made gently to sustain a stretch, the receptors in the tendon induce a reflex inhibition of the motor nerve that serves the muscle, and the muscle automatically relaxes to prevent injury to itself or the connective tissue.
Thus, when you sustain a stretch and carefully increase pressure, the GTOs are activated and order the resisting muscle to stop contracting. This movement is experienced as a sudden dissipating of tension as the muscle relaxes further, enabling you to lengthen it a little more. It usually takes at least seven seconds before this release of tension in a held stretch can occur, so there is little effectiveness in rapid, short stretching.
By adding mindfully controlled stretching to all your exercise routines, you should experience your body becoming more user-friendly. With increased mobility over all joints, you are certain to enjoy living in a more flexible, less stressed body.