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Everyone’s regular exercise program needs to include stretching exercises. When you create an exercise program that is right for you time is always a concern. The workout for the busy professional we have on our website takes into consideration the limited amount of time many people will dedicate to their fitness. It is designed to work the basic core muscle groups and cardiovascular in a reasonable amount of time.
The basic core workout for beginners does include strategies to include the time necessary for stretching. You really must include that as part of your workout.
Typical training programs cause your muscles to contract and flex. If those people who train regularly with weights do not include stretching they generally lose flexibility. Their training works the muscles, but never stretches the muscle tissues. Regular stretching is very important for your well-being. Stretching exercises will:
improve your productivity. Your daily grind will become easier and less tiring.
give you better balance by improving the range of motion in your joints. Good balance keeps you mobile and less prone to injuries related to falls that tend to happen more often as you age.
improve circulation. Stretching increase blood flow to your muscles. Improved circulation can speed recovery after muscle injuries.
relieve stress. Stretching relaxes the tense muscles that often accompany stress. Relaxing the muscles will help you relax your mind.
help prevent athletic injuries according to some studies; however, this finding remains controversial. In our non-scientific experience flexibility absolutely helps prevent injuries, especially in contact sports.
Stretching Fundamentals
The purpose behind deliberately stretching skeletal muscles is to improve the muscle’s elasticity and tone providing for more control and range of motion.
Stretching is a natural and instinctive activity for both humans and animals. When you get up from a nights sleep or sitting for a long period of time you instinctively stretch. You see animals do the same thing. Many yoga stretches derive their names from observing animals stretch.
A basic component of a physical fitness routine is increasing flexibility. It is a standard ritual for any athlete before and after competing or exercising.
Many people practice Yoga, which generally involves doing stretching exercises for major muscle groups. Stretching can strengthen muscles as well.
Like any exercise program you do need to use proper stretching techniqe. There several stretching techniques and depending on which muscle group is being worked, some of those methods may be ineffective or damaging. You could possibly cause lasting damage to the tendons, ligaments and muscle fibers.
The Theories Behind Improving Flexibility
Gymnasts, dancers, martial artists all demonstrate grace, strength, and flexibility. Most of us have no need or desire to become that flexible. If you do a few basic stretching exercises for core muscle groups such as your legs and back correctly and regularly you will become more flexible.
In order to understand correct stretching techniques we should have basic knowledge about the soft tissues that are being stretched.
Flexibility of your muscles are influenced by several factors.
1. Aging causes your muscles to lose their elasticity because of changes in the muscle as well as collagen in the connective tissues.
2. Having your muscle go unused for a period of time will cause a loss of flexibility.
3. Excessive training increases stiffness.
4. Warming your muscles causes an increase in elasticity. If your body is warmed through physical activity or even if it is a warm day it will have more flexibility. Think of it as a metallurgist working with hot metal to shape it. Your body needs to be warm before stretching.
5. If the cells of your muscles have too much fluid your, muscle can lose its elasticity.
6. The design of your muscles and tendons can cause a loss in flexibility. Your muscles and tendons have specific nerves that are designed to contract if it senses they are being pulled or stretched too far. The contraction is designed to help prevent over-stretching or pulling the muscle.
7. When you hold a stretch for more than 6 seconds your reacts to the muscle tension by signaling the brain, which responds by signaling the muscle to relax. Therefor when doing stretching exercises you need to do them slowly with a gradual increase in the range of motion every couple of seconds up to about 20 seconds.
A few trainers incorporate an alternative concept which is to do stretching exercises in a manner that requires you to contract the muscles that work opposite to the one you are stretching. That technique causes the muscle you want to stretch to relax so you can stretch it with less tension. As an example, if you were stretching your hamstring you would do the stretch in a way that forces you to use the quadriceps and thereby forcing your hamstring to relax while you stretch it.
The primary structure in the connective tissues in and around your muscles is collagen. These tissues are referred to as ‘passive’ or ‘non-contractile’.
Collagen is made up of viscous and elastic properties. A viscous tissue will deform and stay deformed permanently. For example, if you pull on a piece of putty, it will keep that new shape. An elastic tissue (think rubber band) will return to its original length when the force is removed.
Viscoelasticity describes a property of tissues such as collagen, where it will stretch, then stay stretched for a while before slowly returning to its original length. Viscoelasticity tells us a number of practical things about stretching the connective tissues in muscles:
1. Studies indicate that no extra benefit is gained from stretching a muscle several times in a session.
2. Also, there is nothing gained by holding a stretch for longer than 20 seconds due to the fact it takes just 12 to 18 seconds to reach stress relaxation.
3. Any passive stretching exercises need to be done SLOWLY. Due to the viscous characteristic of the muscle tissue once they are stretched the length changes are not rapidly reversible. The changes are not permanent because the elastic properties of the tissues will eventually bring them back to its original length.
4. Lasting changes come from adaptive remodeling of the connective tissues. There is some evidence that the temporary change in length following a stretch may start to regress after four hours.
How you actually become more flexible
A number of physical properties of viscoelastic tissues help describe how these tissues elongate with stretching. These properties are creep, load relaxation and hysteresis. Creep describes the ability of a tissue to elongate over time when a constant force is placed on it.
Load relaxation explains how less force is necessary to maintain a tissue at a specific length over time.
Hysteresis describes the amount of lengthening a tissue will maintain after a cycle of stretching and relaxing.
Different stretching types
STATIC
The purpose of the held static stretches is to place the joints in the outer limits of their typical range and then subjected to a steady passive stretch. This kind of stretch is perfect for stretching the connective tissue components since it takes advantage of the viscoelastic properties to cause elongation of the tissue and of the six-second rule.
DYNAMIC RANGE OF MOTION
1. Dynamic Range of Motion describes stretching when a muscle is taken through a full, slow and large amplitude motion using the opposing muscles to produce the force. Dynamic range of motion stretching is done under control and is smooth by nature.
2. Ballistic stretching is fast and rapid while taking the muscles through large ranges of motion. For example, using leg swings to stretch the hamstrings would be considered a ballistic stretch. The benefit of ballistic stretching is that it is it can be sport-specific and allows for integration of the ‘stretch reflex’ when done often over a period of time. When the neuromuscular system adapts to this stretching, it causes the stretch reflex to minimize its ability to limit the muscle range.
3. Bouncing and ballistic stretching are similar. Bouncing is different in that it is performed in small oscillations at the end of the range. The dangers of each are that they often lead to significant muscle soreness because of the rapid stretching of the muscle, which initiates the stretch reflex and increases muscle tension. Furthermore, bouncing fails to provide appropriate time for the muscle tissues to adapt to the stretch.
PNF (PROPRIOCEPTIVE NEUROMUSCULAR FACILITATION)
PNF uses the concept that muscle relaxation is fundamental to elongation of muscle tissue. PNF stretching exists in a number of different forms, but the only ones discussed here will be the contract relax (CR), hold-relax (HR) and contract relax and antagonist contraction (CRAC) stretching exercises.
a) The CR technique passively takes the muscle to be stretched to the end of range. Usually a partner is used to provide resistance as the muscle to be stretched is placed under maximum contraction. The stretch is held for at least six seconds when the muscle is then relaxed and taken to a new range and held for about 20 seconds. Typically the technique is repeated 3-4 times.
b) Hold Relax (HR) is very similar to contract relax with the difference being the contraction type is static. The muscle to be stretched is passively taken to end of range. Maximum contraction of the muscle to be stretched is performed against resistance (usually another person). With this form of contraction, the muscle does not shorten during its isometric contraction. This is continued for at least six seconds. The muscle is then relaxed and taken to a new range and held for about 20 seconds. This can be repeated 3-4 times.
c) Contract Relax Antagonist Contraction (CRAC) Stretch. The first part of this stretch is similar to the CR method above; however, when the muscle to be stretched is relaxed after its six- second contraction, the OPPOSITE OR ANTAGONIST muscle is contracted for at least six seconds. The antagonist is then relaxed and the stretched muscle is taken to a new range.
If stretching exercises are not included as part of your workout routine over the course of your life you will not be able to maintain reasonable flexibility. Your flexibility is part of your over-all fitness and will allow you to be more active as you age.
Get more information on stretching exercises or on workouts.
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