Why Invest Your Time Warming-Up And Doing Stretching And Mobility Exercises? - Part 1A
feel pleasantly warm with circulating blood before the body's main groups of muscles are put through their paces!
The need to know your body's signals: As you do an exercise and feel the relevant muscles under tension, it is important to respond to your body's own signals. The muscles should feel extended but not pulled for as you know, if you overstretch shortened muscles too suddenly, you may tear the muscle fibres. The aim is to allow a gradual and comfortable lengthening of the muscle fibres.
The 1 millimeter to 1 centimeter rule: with each successive repetition of a stretching exercise you should be able to extend the muscle a little more each time - from one millimetre to one centimetre at a time.
The need to never feel pain: "No pain, no gain" belongs to lifting weights and training sessions on the track. You should never feel pain when doing stretching exercises. So do not force the stretching exercise. Work slowly and gently towards improving flexibility. Initially do the stretching within your own limitations and as your program progresses, the stretching routine gradually improves. Everyone is different in natural flexibility - some are very flexible, whilst others are not very flexible and find stretching difficult.
Types of Stretching: Static, Ballistic or Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation (PNF)
Focus Question: Of these three types of exercise, why is it generally better for an athlete to use static stretching exercises?
Static Stretching: As described above by Jim Alford, the muscle is gently stretched until a slight feeling of discomfort is felt - until you feel the tension bite - and held for a length of time. Then relax slowly. This is the generally recommended technique for runners and so the most used.
Ballistic Stretching: this is a more forceful stretch. Repeated bouncing movements are used. This creates potential for muscle or tendon injury because they shorten the muscle fibres, and so they are not usually recommended for general use.
Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation (PNF): This is the most effective stretching technique as it takes into account the physiological responses of the nervous system, muscles, joints, and tendons. However, it is not widespread. There are two reasons for this: it is difficult to understand, and you need a partner to do it.
PNF technique generally includes an initial stretch of the muscle followed by an isometric muscle contraction with resistance given by the partner, the some relaxation for a few seconds, with a
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