TO STRETCH OR NOT TO STRETCH?

A. Traditional Stretching

If you’ve ever been to see a physiotherapist or even had an injury and gone to see your doctor or a traditional exercise class, you have probably done traditional stretching. Whenever you move your body in a way that lengthens a muscle without weight bearing, you are stretching your muscle.



B. Stretch Reflex Response

Your muscles are made of muscle fibres, spindles, nerves and sensors. When you stretch your muscles, the regular muscle fibres lengthen a few millimeters and, ideally, unkink any knots. The neighbouring muscle spindles that run along the fibres provide feedback through attached nerves and sensors in the muscles to tell your muscle fibres that they have gone too far or too fast. When this happens, your muscle responds by contracting even more to protect itself. This is called the stretch reflex response.

C. What to do about it

By moving slowly and moving in sync with your breath, you can reduce or prevent the stretch reflex response from kicking in. This is one reason why I love slow mindful yoga practices. You can easily feel when the stretch is going too far and pull back. This teaches your body to “trust” you and the response doesn’t kick in as soon or as intensely which allows you to slightly lengthen your muscle fibres. Please note, stretching only gives you a few extra millimeters so don’t expect just because you move slowly, that you will suddenly gain centimeters. That just doesn’t happen.

D. PNF Stretching

Also called Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation (that’s why we call it PNF stretching) and sometimes by osteopaths or myofascial release practitioners, muscle energy technique. One of the other important features of your muscles are the golgi tendon body. This is a nerve bundle at the junction of the muscle and tendon which, when it feels the muscle contract too hard, it provides feedback to the muscle fibres to relax so the muscle doesn’t get injured from contracting too hard like when you try to lift too heavy a weight. If your golgi tendon body didn’t make your muscle relax, you could tear it. In PNF stretching, we use this to trick our muscles into relaxing so we can get a little extra stretch. Remember, we only get millimeters so you may not notice it except the change in feeling in your muscle.

How this works in the case of our hamstring stretch is we press our leg against our hands or the wall or floor to cause our hamstring to contract gently. We only press about 50% or half of full strength. Hold the contraction for about three seconds and repeat two more times. This will cause the muscle to relax further. Then take a deep slow breath and on the exhale, we can slowly stretch a little further. Stop before you feel any discomfort or what we typically call the stretch feeling and always keep a small bend in the knee.

E. Additional Stretching Advice

If you have been told you don’t just have a tight muscle but a short one, and you’re trying to lengthen it over time, it helps to fully warm the muscle up before stretching. Stretching cold muscles in isolation makes injuring muscles more likely. It is always best to incorporate stretching into a full body exercise program. Using a strap or a wall can help you achieve a stretch you wouldn’t otherwise be able to perform.

F. Next Steps

If you aren’t sure which muscles to stretch or how to stretch them, reach out for assistance in learning which stretches are helpful for you and how best method of stretching for you. Private yoga sessions are great opportunities to have someone focus just on you and help you figure out a stretching and yoga program that is best for you.