Priscilla Xu

Reading Time: 5 min

Most of my friends are not flexible, but stretching is very painful.

Push through the pain.

Is this a virtue or horrible advice for stretching?

One day, I was talking to a friend,

“I wanted to endure emotion and physical pain, to be resilient, but not feel so shitty during the process.”

“You can do that,” I said. “It’s a simple perspective shift to see what pain is. But you must understand the mechanism and processes to know when to do it.”

“What is it, she asked?”

When you experience pain, it’s a sign of growth.”

Look Nicer When You Stand

Of course, being is more than surprising your friends that you can do splits.

Whenever people think of stretching, they think of yoga or contortion.

Contrary to popular thought, flexibility is a characteristic that we can all improve on. We do not need to get into hyper flexibility mode (bending your finger to your wrist) to feel the benefits of stretching.

Your limb range of motion decreases 10% every ten years nonlinearly. So it’s not entirely 1% every year.

Regardless, it’s our responsibility to slow down that decrease and take good care of our limbs.

If you increase your flexibility,

• You can learn new movements faster.
• You can also prevent injuries and reduce inflammation in your body.
• You can increase your posture.
• You can increase your ability to push through the pain.
• Your stretch can adjust tumor growth.

This is all in your nervous system that mediates your flexibility and stretch.

Physiological Mechanism of Preventing Muscle from Over Stretching.

Our body is a meaty billion-year-old robot. So, how does the muscular system’s protection mechanism to prevent a range of motion work with your brain?

Your body has six simple parts that protect your muscles from overstretching or extending.

• Upper motor neuron is the cell that plans the action of your movement.
  • They are located in the primary motor cortex (in front of the horizontal, central groove of the brain)
  • This group of a neuron can override lower motor neurons.
• Lower Motor Neuron is the neuron that receives the connection from the upper motor neuron and connects in the spinal cord.
• Acetylcholine is the chemical that acts as a messenger to instruct your muscle to contract.
• The GTO and muscle spindle are like bodyguards.
  • GTO senses tension
  • Muscle spindle senses stretch
    • They both send signals to the spinal cord through lower motor neurons.

The GTO, muscle spindle, upper motor neuron, and lower motor neuron are a team to control your biceps and triceps. Upper motor neurons send signals to the lower motor neurons to contract or relax muscles.

Let’s put it into context with the famous pair of muscles: the bicep and triceps.

For example, when lifting a heavy weight, the muscle spindle detects an increase in the stretch and sends a signal to the spinal cord to activate the biceps to lift the weight.

At the same time, the GTO detects an increase in tension and sends an alert to the spinal cord to relax the biceps to prevent injury.

Or Acetylcholine will signal the antagonist’s triceps, so you extend your arm to offset the weight. This coordination is crucial for preventing damage while doing physical activities.

Mechanism Controlling Pain

We are always aware of what’s going on inside our bodies. How we move and what we see all influences the internal state.

You see pretty things or smell an aroma; you want to move ward it.

You see a pile of trash and smell poop; you want to walk away.

You see someone you don’t know; you have a particular decision to move towards.

This is the job of the insula. It categorizes feelings into meh, yuck, or yum.

In the posterior insula, a group of cool neurons called Von Economo neurons integrates the senses of body movement, pain/discomfort from stretching and combine them to decide whether to push through the pain for a specific purpose.

Why should you even bother to push through the pain to stretch?

Stretching doesn’t have to be a painful experience; instead of just enduring it, relax into it. The term relaxing into the stretch has a specific meaning.

Imagine running from a fierce wolf; the only way out it to run out a road of hot stones. Naturally, your brain will choose to continue running for survival because it benefits your survival.

When we tell our brain that the stretch is good for us, the parasympathetic nervous system activates and can override the muscle spindle contraction with the help of van Economo neurons, making the stretching experience more beneficial and enjoyable.

Methods of Stretching

PNF Stretching

PNF stretching is a way of stretching that uses both passive and active movements. It involves holding a stretch for a short period of time, then contracting the muscle being stretched, and testing again.

An example of this type of stretching is the “contract-relax” technique.

You try a muscle, tense it for 5-6 seconds, then release the contraction and stretch again.

Another example of PNF stretching is the “hold-relax” technique.,

You hold a stretch for 10-15 seconds, then relax for 5-10 seconds and stretch again.

Static Stretching

Static stretching is when a person holds a muscle in a stretched position for some time without moving.

An example of a static stretch would be reaching down to touch your toes and holding that position for 30 seconds.

Static stretching is more effective for limb range of motion than dynamic and ballistic stretching.

Ballistic Stretching

You will swing your arm more in this type of stretching. Swing your arm in a circular motion and let it fall. That’s it. However, this is not recommended.

Dynamic Stretching.

Dynamic stretching is a stretching in which a person moves through a full range of motion while stretching a muscle.

It involves active, controlled movements that mimic the movement patterns of the sport or activity you will be performing.

An example of a dynamic stretch would be leg swings.

You can activate your muscle and nervous system with dynamic stretching before resistance. You are familiarizing and warming up the joints for your pathways of training.

How frequently to stretch?

The researchers discovered how long and how often to stretch in the paper titled, The Effect of Time and Frequency of Static Stretching on the Flexibility of the Hamstring Muscles.

Researchers tested the flexibility of 93 participants: 61 men and 32 women from 21 to 39 years old. They were assigned to give one of give groups, and one of the control groups did not stretch.

It was found that increasing the duration from 30 seconds to 60 seconds did not provide any additional benefits.

So, the secret recipe for the best stretch duration is to hold each stretch for 30 seconds and do it five times a week.

Or 5 minutes per muscle group per week. It’s that simple!

To be flexible is to find your reason to stick through the pain and slowly improve your flexibility. The reason to stretch will be a part of your identity, and people will ask you, how can you still touch your toes at this age? OMG.