What Happens When You Stretch?

     This article explained what stretching is and the effects of stretching on muscles. I learned why stretching caused flexibility from an anatomical perspective. I learned that connective tissue plays a big role in stretching; it's helps when a muscle is stretched further than normal. Stretching realigns fibers and fixed scarred tissue, which explains why stretching helps with soreness. The article also explained reciprocal inhibition and how the muscles contract and relax to cause a desired motion. I thought the most interesting part of the article was how muscle spindles work. Sudden changes in muscle length can cause strong muscle contractions so muscle spindles help maintain muscle tone and prevent injuries. You could even train the stretch reflex of the muscles, increasing flexibility.

-"The more fibers stretched, the more length developed by the muscle for a given stretch." (1) - this gave me a better understanding of flexibility of the muscle. I knew that stretching got rid of soreness, but I did not know how that correlated with muscle fibers.

-"as you hold the muscle in a stretched position, the muscle spindle habituates and reduces its signaling" (3) - this explained why people must stretch every day in order to be able to do a split or just touch their toes. After a while, the muscle is able to stretch further and further because of the reduction of signaling.

-"When you stretch your calf, you want to contract the shin muscles by flexing your foot. However, the hamstrings use the calf as a synergist so you want to also relax the hamstrings by contracting the quadricep" (2) - I found it interesting how simply flexing the foot could affect multiple muscles as far up as the quads and hamstrings. It's like a chain reaction; each muscle lifts up another muscle.