What’s the difference between a flexible person’s and an inflexible person’s muscles? Why can’t a person just do the splits? Can someone stretch too much in a day like lifting or running?
In: Biology
They get longer!
You can stretch too much, you want the muscles to stretch, not the tendons or ligaments. Doing the splits is not ‘normal’, meaning, you shouldn’t be able to do it unless you stretch regularly for a long time.
The body has a protective response called the stretch reflex. When you stretch a muscle rapidly, the muscle sends input to your brain, the brain sends a response back to shorten the muscle in an attempt to protect that muscle from being overstretched. This contraction while the muscle being stretched is what can cause injury.
When you stretch regularly in a controlled manner, you don’t trigger this reflex which allows you to extend the muscle further than normal. This allows the muscle to remain relaxed and temporarily lengthens the muscle. To my knowledge the primary difference between flexibility and lack of is the suppression of the stretch reflex. A flexible person doesn’t literally have longer muscles at rest, but their body is more adapted to relaxing muscles and allowing them to temporarily lengthen beyond their normal length. Without practicing flexibility it’s difficult to overcome the reflex and your body is less able to relax as heavily.
This is why you don’t static stretch *before* a workout – that relaxation and temporary lengthening actually makes it more difficult to generate power so your performance *is* worse than if you didn’t stretch. Dynamic stretching has a different purpose though – to bring blood to the muscles used for the pending workout.
Not sure if there is “too much” stretching possible in a day, assuming you aren’t intentionally forcing stretches or anything.
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