Joint range of movement is important for optimal health and avoiding injuries due to muscular tightness. Flexibility is also an essential component of fitness for most sports. A person may damage their muscles, tendons, and ligaments with any sudden stretch beyond a muscles resting length if they have poor flexibility.
Stretching programs improve flexibility but there are other benefits. Some of these include; stress relief (through proper breathing and release of tension), enhanced blood flow and nutrient absorption, strength gains, and improvement in athletic movements.
Before beginning a stretching session, be sure you have warmed up the muscles that will be worked on. Dynamic, moving stretching, or preparative stretching, should be performed before strength training to warm up your muscles. Dynamic stretching includes movements such as arm circles, leg swings, torso twists. You do not want to perform static stretching before strength training. If you are going to do flexibility training on a non-training day, perform a few minutes of skipping to help warm up the muscles and promote better blood flow.
Static stretching (especially PNF or proprioceptive neurofacilitation) is the most effective way to stretch a muscle to improve flexibility. This is done using the contract/relax method. For this method, you stretch a muscle to its limit without feeling pain. At this point, you contract the muscle for a few seconds, while holding your breath. You then release the tension, exhale, and length the muscle more by deepening the stretch.
If you want to know how to stretch every muscle using PNF techniques, exercise physiologist Pavel Tstatouline has a few great videos and books available (including
Relax Into Stretch: Instant Flexibility Through Mastering Muscle Tension
). A few other great books by other great authorities on flexibility include;
Prescriptive Stretching
,
Stretch To Win
, and
Facilitated Stretching
.
Poor flexibility, and muscle tightness, and trigger point pain, from activity, inactivity, or injury, can be caused by tightness in the fascia that covers the muscle. This web-like structure becomes tangled. Sometimes stretching will not solve this issue. However, tissue massage is effective. Two of my favourite new self-massage tools include; Trigger Point Performance Therapy U-6 and the Rumber Roller.
