Stretching

Overview: A detailed explanation of the various components of Wisercise and how they work together to provide a life-long urban health fitness training system.

Mindfulness: Harness the Power of The Mind-Body Connection with the practice of Mindfulness. Free yourself from mechanical, conditioned ways of thinking and living which may be harmful to yourself or others.

Breathing: Ageing and the pressures of modern daily life will cause you to change the way you breathe. This article introduces a technique of deep breathing called the Complete Breath and highlights its role in maintaining good health and quality of life.

Posture: Many of the muscles used for breathing are also used for postural alignment. Good posture will improve your breathing and balance in addition to preventing falls and injuries. Learn how to fine-tune your posture for best results.

Stretching: Stretching is an extremely versatile and accomodating form of movement used by physiotherapists, athletes, ballet dancers, pugilists and the military. It is not only a bookend to vigorous exercise but a beneficial exercise in itself!

Aerobic Exercise: Add Years to Life & Life to Years with a traditional, easy-to-do exercise form that positively affects the years of life after age 40, lengthening life while postponing and compacting end-of-life disability.

Inside Aerobics: Find out what happens to you when you exercise aerobically and the benefits to your heart, brain and vital organs.

Best Aerobic Exercise: Researchers have found Walking to be the best aerobic exercise for daily health and wellness maintenance due to its accessibility, lowest injury rate of any exercise form and ability to reduce risk of premature death, dementia and other diseases.

Quickstep Overview: An overview of the Quickstep aerobic briskwalking technique. What is it? How can it benefit you?

Inside Quickstep: An inside look at Quickstep. Find out about Walking Mechanics, Tensegrity, Core Muscles and Balance and how to make these work together to make Quickstep go.

Introduction

Stretching is an extremely versatile and accomodating form of movement. It is used by athletes, ballet dancers, pugilists and the military to prepare for strenuous physical activity and as a way to end a training session.

Physiotherapists use muscle stretching in rehabilitation programmes for their clients. Sports Therapists, regard stretching as an indispensible segment of a training profile for safety reasons and excellence in performance.

However, stretching is not merely a bookend to vigorous exercise.

It is an excellent beneficial exercise in itself!

Stretching for Health

Research clearly shows that engaging the body in daily stretching movements is a vital form of exercise that keeps the body flexible while offering many health benefits.

A 2009 study 1 showed that people age 40 and older who performed well on a sit-and-reach (flexibility) test had less stiffness in their arterial walls and were therefore at lower risk of stroke and heart attack.

A Journal of Physiology article 2 reports that people who struggle to walk due to pain or lack of mobility or patients with foot or leg problems related to conditions such as diabetes could use muscular stretching to improve blood flow to their lower limbs and increase or regain walking function.

“Our research suggests that static muscle stretching performed regularly can have a real impact by increasing blood flow to muscles in the lower leg.

This highlights that even individuals who struggle to walk due to pain or lack of mobility can undertake activity to possibly improve their health.”

"This is a very safe, easy intervention that can be done at home.

It is possible that greater stretch or stretch that increases steadily over a four-week period would have an even greater benefit.

It is also possible that greater benefit would be seen if the stretching continued for longer than four weeks.”

Judy Muller-Delp,
PhD.
Professor of Biomedical Sciences
at Florida State University.

Stretching helps guard
against falling

Daily stretching exercises help guard against falling by sharpening your awareness of your position in space and how your body responds to movement.

Research 3 shows that stretching helps strengthen muscles and increase flexibility — benefits that are critical to balance and stability that help guard against falling when you are standing still (static balance) and when you move (dynamic balance).

In addition to helping keep you flexible and fit, stretching boosts circulation needed for being aware and alert (cognition) that also can help prevent falls.4

Muscle mass naturally decreases as you age, a process known as sarcopenia which starts as early as the third decade of life.

People who are physically inactive can lose as much as 3 to 5 percent of their muscle mass per decade after age 30.5

Sarcopenia is a component of the frailty syndrome contributing to fatigue, weakness, reduced tolerance to exercise, decrease in quality of life and large health care costs experienced by the elderly.6

Flexibility exercises stretch your muscles and help your body stay supple regardless of your age. Flexible muscles have the potential to become stronger muscles.7

Strong muscle fibers will boost your metabolism and improve your fitness level and overall sense of well-being.

"If you don't do anything to replace the lean muscle you lose, you'll increase the percentage of fat in your body. Because lean muscle contributes to movement, a more muscular body burns more calories per day, helping you manage your weight.”

Edward Laskowski,
MD.
Mayo Clinic physical medicine
and rehabilitation specialist.

What can Stretching do for You?

Daily stretching exercises can help to enhance your overall quality of life at any age, mitigating the physiological changes that occur as you grow older.

Improved Body Composition and
Weight Management

Your body functions better when your joints move comfortably. This can help you lose weight in a couple of ways:

Stretching helps to keep you active. You're more likely to move more throughout the day if your joints and limbs feel good. This translates to more calories burned throughout the day and a higher metabolism.

Stretching does burn a few extra calories. Exactly how many calories are burned stretching?

Here's a quick rundown:

Relaxation

Stretching can be a great way to to relax after a long day, a time for you to get to know yourself, how your body is feeling and the mental and physical changes taking place within you.

Improved Breathing

Breathing and stretching work together to influence your physical and mental states.

There are stretches to positively affect chest wall and lung expansion capabilities which encourage you to breathe slowly and deeply. This will, in turn, increase body awareness and induce relaxation while improving your breathing efficiency.

Stability, Balance and
Ease of Movement

A supple body accommodates freedom of movement making everyday activities easier while reducing your risk of injuries.

Flexibility exercises stretch your muscles and help your body stay supple and balanced regardless of your age.

Improved Posture

Your muscles work together to hold your skeleton erect by providing tension against your bones. Some daily activities cause muscle imbalance by using some muscles more than others.

For example, sitting at your computer for long periods shortens your chest muscles while stretching the muscles in the upper back. Over time, you may become stoop-shouldered.

Exercising weak muscles and stretching tight ones restores balanced tension, keeps your spine in healthy alignment and takes pressure off the disks and nerves between the vertebrae.

What Happens When You Stretch?

Regular stretching increases flexibility by making muscles more supple and by retraining the nervous system to tolerate muscle lengthening.

Flexibility from regular stretching gradually disappears once you stop stretching, typically after 4 weeks.

Several mechanisms are called into play when you stretch. They are controlled by your brain and interact with each other to protect you from hurting yourself.

Muscle spindles

These are receptors within the body of a muscle that detect changes in its length whenever stretching occurs.

This information is conveyed to the central nervous system via special nerve fibers and processed by the brain to determine the position and status of body parts.

With this information the brain regulates the contraction of muscles by means of the following reflexes.

The Stretch reflex

Limits muscle lengthening by causing muscle contraction thereby stopping a stretch from going too far.

The Golgi tendon reflex

Causes muscle relaxation before the tendon tension becomes high enough to cause injury.

The Stretching Process

The stretching of a muscle fiber begins with the Sarcomere the basic unit of contraction in the muscle fiber and Myofilaments a type of connective tissue.

As the sarcomere stretches, the area of overlap between the thick and thin myofilaments decreases allowing the muscle fiber to elongate.

Cross-section of a muscle

Once the muscle fiber is at its maximum resting length i.e. all the sarcomeres are fully stretched, additional stretching places force on the surrounding connective tissue.

As the tension increases, collagen fibers in the connective tissue align themselves along the same line of force as the tension.

So when you stretch the muscle, fiber is pulled out to its full length sarcomere by sarcomere and then the connective tissue takes up the remaining slack.

This process helps realign any disorganized fibers in the direction of the tension.

The realignment of fibres promotes rehabilitation of muscle tissues.

Stretching safely

Being aware of and sensitive to all these mechanisms during stretching will protect you from injury.

Experts recommend gradually extending a stretch just to the point of comfortable tension while encouraging yourself to breath slowly and deeply.

Hold the stretch for 20-30 seconds then slowly return to your starting position.

Avoid unsafe stretching techniques such as extending too fast into the stretch or "bouncing". These actions will activate protective mechanisms that will actually prevent you from stretching.