What Happens When You Stretch?

Article: What Happens When You Stretch?

In this article it talks about what physiologically is occurring within your muscles that allows you (and does not allow you) to stretch. As the muscle stretches the area of overlap of myofilament decreases. Once the sarcomere is at its most elongated position the connective tissue does the rest of the stretching. Not all fibers are stretched, some are just relaxed. Muscoskeletal receptors are called proprioceptors. The one's that take part in stretching are located in tendons and muscle fibers. Intrafusal fibers are the primary proprioceptors in the muscle. They receive a message from the muscle and send it to the spinal receptors. In order for a muscle to stretch it must have a counterpart that is contracting. This is called reciprocal inhibition.

Quotes: "The basic function of the golgi tendon organ helps to protect the muscles, tendons, and ligaments from injury."

The golgi tendon essentially prevents us from over-stretching and that is why we feel pain when we push ourselves to far in a stretch because the golgi is telling our nervous system that we need to stop stretching.

"You also want to relax any muscle synergists by the muscle you are trying to stretch."

On top of there being counter contracting and relaxing of muscles, there also needs to be a coesive stretching among synergists muscles.

"One reason for holding a stretch for a prolonged period of time is that...the muscle spindles habituates"

By holding the stretch for a longer period of time you are essentially training your receptors to allow greater lengthening of muscle. The longer you hold, the more the signal is reduced. This is also why in dance class we hold stretches for minutes at a time.