Dance Recommendation | Stretching versus Over-Stretching — A Dancer’s Life

Stretching is likely one of the finest methods to enhance your flexibility and vary of movement. It promotes circulation and retains the joints and muscle tissue versatile, permitting the physique to stay supple and vibrant. When your fascia is feeling supple and hydrated, it provides you a way of spaciousness and connectedness to your physique because the nerves within the fascia can optimally talk with our mind. The connective tissue in your physique can also be partly chargeable for your proprioception, your physique’s sense of the place it’s in house and the way it pertains to itself. Feeling a slight pull within the muscle in a means that’s not completely comfy is a optimistic factor – it means you’re working to extend your flexibility. A productive power ought to really feel barely uncomfortable however any stabbing or sharp ache is a no-go.

Whereas stretching can alleviate compression and enhance flexibility, over-stretching may be counter productive and really result in stiffness. Over-stretching occurs once you stretch your muscle tissue past their capability by way of flexibility and vary of movement. It means the size of the tissue is larger than ones capacity to manage stated size. It might probably additionally infer {that a} muscle is stretched previous its level of pure elasticity and wholesome tissue size. This could usually occur in these with hyper-mobile joints as they’ve actually free ligaments which permit the joint to maneuver additional than it must.

Inside the muscle stomach lies ‘spindles’ that are sensory receptors that decide up the velocity and depth of a stretch. If a stretch is simply too quick or too intense, the spindles set off a reflex arc to the spinal twine and again to the muscle tissue to contract so as to keep away from tearing muscle fibres. We wish to stretch additional however our spindles intercede to guard us, leading to stretching with a sense of stiffness and resistance, locked right into a contraction and going nowhere. To maintain the muscle spindles at bay, consider lengthening into softness and preserve that size over time. This can enable the spindles to habituate to the brand new size and hearth much less often.

Over-stretching may trigger ligament injury. Ligaments are designed to assist every joint and may get increasingly more relaxed from extreme stretching. If over-stretching continues it might probably trigger inside shifting of the joint surfaces towards one another. By reducing the integrity of the ligaments, it might probably additionally trigger put on and tear on cartilage resulting in joint ache and degeneration.

There’s a nice line between difficult our muscle tissue so as to enhance our flexibility and hurting ourselves. Not warming up previous to stretching is the first motive strains and pulls happen. Warming up consists of the inclusion of dynamic actions that can encourage the circulation of blood across the physique and enhance the vary of movement. As soon as the physique is heat, we are able to progress into static stretching and proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF) – stretching that contracts and holds a focused muscle in a stretched place. To study extra concerning the significance of warming up, take a look at our different article right here.