STOP Stretching Like This…

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but if your muscles are stiff okay and you don’t have good range of motion you need to watch this video now being in sports wrestling I’ve did a lot of stretching in the past and the way we’re taught is it’s called static stretching where you’re actually you know trying to stretch out a muscle and you’re holding it for 30 to 60 seconds that is the worst way to stretch now this information is based on a really interesting book and I’ll put the link down below authored by Jim and Phil Wharton now I’m not sure about Jim but Phil is a physiotherapist and a fitness coach and has worked with some of the top runners in the world Olympic runners okay so this guy definitely knows his stuff but his information on stretching is quite fascinating it makes a lot of sense and I’m going to share it with you the first point I want to bring up is a tight muscle a tight muscle is not ever going to help you it’s not going to protect the joint it’s actually weaker it’s more susceptible to an injury and usually there’s inflammation now what happens when you stretch a muscle after three seconds is you kick in this stretch reflex it’s called The myotactic Reflex and the purpose of that reflex is to counter this stretch and create a contraction so when you stretch a muscle you’re basically causing the muscle to fight that stretch okay and start to contract and so you have the situation where you’re using Force against force and you can actually injure yourself and I’ve done that many many times even before a wrestling match I would stretch incorrectly and end up straining or pulling a muscle very simply this is how it works a muscle always comes in a pair so you have one side of the body is Contracting and then the other side is relaxing they don’t both contract at the same time and if you have one muscle that’s healthy and it’s Contracting the other one’s relaxing you have motion and so motion is all about the coordination of this contraction and relaxation and so the type of stretching that they came up with is called active isolated flexibility so very simply there’s just three simple steps all right you want to isolate the muscle you want to stretch so let’s say for example you have a tight hamstring okay that’s the back part of your leg what you want to do is you want to contract the opposing muscle as you stretch the hamstring what is the opposing muscle that would be the thigh muscle or your quadricep okay so you’re going to be contracting the quadricep which is going to automatically cause a communication to the hamstring to relax it because it absolutely makes no sense if you’re going to try to stretch a muscle that you’re Contracting at the same time you want to relax the muscle that you’re stretching right I mean it’s pretty obvious but if you contract the opposing muscle you send signals to allow that hamstring to totally relax so you can stretch it without injury number one identify the muscle you want to stretch number two contract or tighten the opposite muscle okay as you stretch and then number three when you get to the point at the end of the range of motion we’ve gone to a point where you can’t go anymore and I don’t recommend going into pain at that point remember I mentioned the stretch reflex that kicks in well that stretch reflex kicks in at three seconds so what you want to do is you want to stretch it all the way to the end point for two seconds okay and then you relax it that way we avoid the contraction or the countering of this stretch and he recommends that you repeat this eight to ten times per muscle and this could be a great warm-up before your exercise and he even recommends this or maybe a version of this if you injure yourself you see a lot of times when you injure a knee or another part of your body they want to immobilize it now I think you should immobilize it if there’s a fracture where there’s a severe injury but if that injury is not that severe it’s very important to add motion into that joint as soon as possible starting with maybe a passive range of motion and eventually going into these stretches right here which should be very therapeutic in the rehab but that’s a separate topic let’s get back to the stretching so in this first example bent knee hamstring stretch with a rope just so you get the concept you can see he’s Contracting the quadricep as he’s bringing this up for about two seconds at the end of the range of motion and then he’s relaxing right and he’s doing that for eight to ten times and this next one he’s doing the hamstring straight leg so he’s using his thigh muscle or quad to contract as he holds it for two seconds at the end of the range of motion but this is the best way to create a really good relaxation and increase flexibility of the hamstring now of course you’re going to do both sides now I put those links down below to get more information but if you haven’t seen my other video in exercise it’s pretty cool I put it up right here check it out