Making your stretching more effective

-Whether you agree that stretching is good or not, you or your client still may decide to do so possibly because of the “feel good” component. More in that in another post.
-If you do decide to stretch, make sure you take advantage of you or your clients neurology. One way we will discuss today is taking advantage of what we call myotatic reflex.
-The myotatic reflex is a simple reflex arc. The reflex begins at the receptor in the muscle: the muscle spindles (nuclear bag or nuclear chain fibers). This sensory (afferent) information then travels up the peripheral nerve to the dorsal horn of the spinal cord where it enters and synapses in the ventral horn on an alpha motor neuron. The motor neuron (efferent) leaves the ventral horn and travels back down the peripheral nerve to the contractile portion of the myfibrils (muscle fiber) from which the the sensory (afferent) signal came. This causes the muscle to contract. Think of a simple reflex when somebody taps a reflex hammer on your tendon. This causes the muscle to contract and your limb moves.
-Nuclear bag and nuclear chain fibers detect length or stretch in a the muscle whereas Golgi Tendon organs tension. With this in mind, slow stretch of a muscle causes it to contract more, through the muscle spindle mechanism.
- Another reflex that we should be familiar with is called reciprocal inhibition. It states simply that when one muscle contracts it’s antagonist is inhibited.
-Try this:
-do a calf stretch like this: put your foot in dorsiflexion, foot resting on the side of the doorframe.
-Keep your leg straight
-Grab the the door frame with your arms and slowly draw your stomach toward the door frame.
-Feel the stretch in your calf? this is a slow stretch. Can you feel the increased tension in your calf? You could fatigue this reflex if you stretched long enough. If you did, then the muscle would be difficult to activate. This is one of the reasons stretching seems to inhibit performance.
-Now for an added stretch, dorsiflex your toes and try to bring your foot upward. Did you notice how you can get more stretch your calf and increased length? Reciprocal Inhibition!