Many people are not aware of the importance of warming up or cooling down the body before and after performing any physical activity. Doing a warm up and a cool down routine not only helps reduce the risk of injuries but also aids the body’s recovery process. Key to the processes of warming up and cooling down the body is increasing its flexibility through various stretches and thus, stretches should be a major component in any and all fitness regimens.

Before you fully understand the techniques for stretching, it is important to learn a bit about the physiological and biochemical attributes of the tissues that are affected by stretches. All soft tissues such as skin, fascia, joint capsules, tendons and muscles become flexible when they are warm. This is due to their thermo elastic property. In this respect, tissues are analogous to horseshoes shaped by a blacksmith. When they are hot, horseshoes can be reshaped and stretched, but after they are cooled, they become inflexible and rigid. Hence, stretching is not effective when you do it while the body is cool. Thus, you should perform a series of warming up routines to increase the temperature of your tissues before you start performing stretches.

Tendons and muscles possess a neural reflex arc that does not allow excessive stretching or the development of excess tension. Receptor nerves present inside the muscle are sensitive to any changes in muscle tension and muscle length. When you stretch a muscle, the central nervous system receives a message from the muscle spindles and causes a muscle contraction in order to avoid damage from excess stretching. However, if the stretch is held for over a period of six seconds, the central nervous system receives a message that causes the muscles to relax. What all this means is that you should perform stretching exercises slowly with a measured increase in movement every couple of seconds. The entire stretch should last for about twenty seconds.

There are a number of different ways to stretch your soft tissues. If an athlete develops an injury, the physiotherapist may perform the stretches for the athlete passively. In a warm up prior to a sporting event, athletes perform the stretches themselves. This is known as active stretching and requires sustained muscle stretching and relaxation. The degree of the stretching performed can be further categorised as a simple stretch, a developmental stretch or a drastic stretch.

A simple stretch is generally employed in rehabilitating injured athletes and rarely used in the case of athletes who are fit and healthy. If you are doing a simple stretch, you should experience very mild tension in your muscle. This stretch is usually held for ten to thirty seconds.

A developmental stretch causes muscle tension over an increased range of movement of the joints. The tension should cease to exist after about fifteen seconds. These types of stretches are held for twenty to thirty seconds.

A drastic stretch can cause pain and should generally be avoided. Excessive stretching such as this can lead to micro trauma of the muscle tissue which in turn leads to loss in elasticity of the muscles.

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