Stretching isn’t enough to get loose???
Fitness includes Flexibility
I am sure all of us have been told to stretch, even if it was as far back as your elementary school gym teacher. Flexibility has been a measure of fitness for eons, and is included in all comprehensive exercise programs. Appropriate flexibility is essential to movement, locomotion, and good quality of life. Unfortunately, too many of us complain that we are tight or stiff, and we would definitely benefit from some flexibility training.
Causes of reduced flexibility
First off, I must preface the following by saying that it is important that you correctly identify why it is you feel tight or stiff. Sometimes swelling and inflammation can make joints feel full and tight. Other times, inflammatory conditions such as arthritis could be at fault. Nerves with impaired mobility can also limit your joint excursion. Strangely, a muscle can feel tight when it is actually too long! Muscles also take on a spastic or tight quality when they are protecting joints that aren’t controlled well or are a little on the loose side. Stretching muscles like these will not relive this tight sensation to any permanent end. A physiotherapist is well equipped to help you identify the cause of your tightness or stiffness and create a program to free up your movement!
Short muscles
If you do in fact have muscles that feel tight because they are not long enough, stretching is certainly an appropriate way to increase your flexibility. Everyone knows that technique is important. But also of great value are the parameters around stretching. Younger people should hold their stretches for ten to thirty seconds, and elderly people should be holding each position for thirty to sixty seconds. Everyone should perform enough repetitions to accumulate sixty seconds worth of stretch per muscle group. Best results will be achieved when stretching is performed daily. But, some progress will be seen even if you stretch as little as three days per week.
Maintenance
Once you are happy with the flexibility you have achieved, accumulating sixty seconds worth of stretch in the desired muscle will likely be enough to maintain the results of your hard work. However, for overall exercise, stretching two to three days per week is recommended.
But…
In my personal physiotherapy practice, formal stretching does not make up any kind of majority of my exercise programming for rehabilitation. Instead, my preference is to focus on strengthening. If I look more globally at the client in front of me, there is often a weakness in an opposing muscle group that is causing a muscle to shorten in compensation. It is my opinion that stretching the tight muscle is the quick fix.
Strengthening your way to flexibility
The permanent solution would be to strengthen the weak muscle to create overall balance. A lot of times, strengthening the weak muscle concurrently results in lengthening of the tight or short muscle believe it or not. Although sometimes, strengthening the antagonist (or opposing muscle) must be coupled with stretching the agonist (primary muscle) in order to achieve the result we desire. Either way, strengthening is the best way to stretch in my opinion! Remember those tight muscles I mentioned earlier that are actually not tight at all? Muscles that feel tight because they are actually too long or are protecting something underneath are begging to be strengthened!
Don’t believe me?
Come on in to Ireland Manual Physiotherapy today and experience how strengthening can free up your movement!
