Health Habits

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Posts Tagged ‘joint mobility’

Resistance Stretching

October 28th, 2009

In yesterday’s post, I introduced you to microStretching.

Today, it’s Resistance Stretching….made famous by 40-something Olympic and World champion Dara Torres.

In 2008, Resistance Stretching was Dara’s secret weapon at the Olympic Games in Beijing where she won three silver medals, broke her own personal best time in the 50m freestyle (trailing the gold medalist by 1/100th of a second) and became the oldest Olympic swimming medalist in history.

Dara’s success as an older athlete is what got me interested in Resistance Stretching (RS).

So, I contacted Dara’s RS gurus Steve Sierra and Anne Tierney and grilled them with questions.

Here is some of what they had to say…

What is Resistance Stretching?

Resistance Stretching is based on the theories that:

The stretching effect occurs during the entire movement of the muscle while it is being contracted, not just at the end point of the stretch…unlike traditional static stretching.
A muscle must contract while elongating for a true stretch. Stretching a muscle without contracting produces a false range of motion known as substitution, and ultimately results in over-stretching and injury.
Repetitions are necessary for gains in flexibility, just as repetitions are necessary for gains in strength during strength training.

How do I do it?

Resistance Stretching can be performed alone using self-stretches or with other person(s) using assisted stretching techniques.

Dara relied on assisted stretching to prepare her body for the Olympics.

Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

Unfortunately, you and I will most likely not have access to a team of trained Resistance Stretchers.

But don’t fret, my clients and I have had great success using the standard self-stretches as well as the variations that I MacGyvered on my own.

This video outlines some of the basic self-stretches.

Where you go from here is up to you.

Once you understand the basic concept of Resistance Stretching, you are only limited by your imagination. I am constantly coming up with new stretching variations.

Just follow these ffive steps

Identify the muscle or muscle group that you want to stretch
Start by flexing or shortening that muscle
Tense the muscle
Start stretching the muscle while simultaneously resisting the stretch
Repeat

In a future post, I will provide videos of some of my favorite stretches. I just need to bribe one of my clients to let me record them and put it on the blog.

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If you like what you see here, click here for updates

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microStretching

October 27th, 2009

We all know how to stretch….right?

Bend over, touch your toes and hold for 30 seconds.

So, why is it that after years and years of static stretching after each and every workout, my hip flexors, hamstrings, abductors, calves, traps, pecs and entire shoulder girdle were always uber-tight and I was suffering from lower back spasms every few months?

Could it be that what we thought was right wasn’t?
Could it be that just about every personal trainer in the world is wrong?
Could it be that Mr. Toe Touch was wasting his time and perhaps even making things worse?

This is where I found myself about a year ago.

So I went looking for another way to stretch my tight muscles back into balance.

And I found two very different techniques that worked very well for me.

Today, I am going to introduce you to microStretching.

Micro Stretching from Micro FC on Vimeo.

For those of you that need more info – here is an article written by microStretch guru Nikos Apostolopoulos that explains things in more detail.

Microstretching – Nikos C. Apostolopoulos

That’s it for today.

I am going to let you chew on this concept for a little bit before we get into the “how to” details.

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In tomorrow’s post, I am going to introduce you to Resistance Stretching. If you thought that microStretching is weird, wait until you see this stuff.

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