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Comparing Static and Active Stretching
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Comparing static and active stretching is a comparison of two popular forms of stretching. Static stretching refers to holds of stretches for 10-30 seconds; meanwhile, active stretching involves stretching with opposing muscles rather than waiting for a stretch to reach its maximum point. Static stretching is perfect for after exercise, when your muscles are still warm and need an extra effort to prevent injury, whereas active stretching is used for warming up and exercising muscles to help stimulate them prior to physical activity. Both of these forms of
Transcript
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Sometimes people pit static stretching
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and active stretching against each other,
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like one could be better than the other. Do you know what I'm talking about?
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"I'm active isolated stretching certified." "I do static stretching." "Static
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stretching sucks, because I do active stretching." "Really?" "Yeah." "I do dynamic
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stretching, dynamic stretching is the best, everybody knows dynamic stretching is the
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best and the other two suck, you don't need active stretching." They all do different things!
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You are comparing apples to oranges, stop it. As long as they fly on the continuum of
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intensity and speed. So, static stretching. We only use static stretching
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to lengthen a muscle that has adaptively shortened. So, even if a muscle is
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overactive but not short, we wouldn't use static stretching. It's all about
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lengthening the fascial network around a muscle. Are you familiar with endomecium,
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paramecium, all of that stuff?
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So that's the fascial network around a muscle. What static stretching does is
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you pull a muscle into a stretch position, and when you first pull a
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muscle into a stretch position does that muscle become more active or less
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active? More active, right? You can feel the tension build up in your muscle
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a little bit when you stretch it. And the reason that's happening is what? The
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muscle spindle gets triggered, that sends a signal back to your CNS, your central nervous
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system in your spinal cord, and that signal goes right back out and tells
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that muscle to start contracting again. It's almost like a protective mechanism
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to keep you from ripping your muscles in half. Alright,
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so the first thing you do when you pull a muscle into stretch is activate that
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muscle spindle. Now, tension builds up, and providing it's only a small amount of
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tension, and not a huge amount of tension,
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that tension starts stimulating somebody else:
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the Golgi tendon organ. The Golgi tendon organ are tension receptors. So muscle spindles
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are stretch receptors, gogli tendon are tension receptors. Now, as the tension builds up,
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but not in a way that we feel unsafe, and those GTOs are getting stimulated,
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they send their signal through the CNS, and what does their signal do? It inhibits. It shuts
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down. That is what autogenic inhibition is. Are you with me? So autogenic
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inhibition is what the GTO does. So we get a little bit of muscle spindle
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activity, and then GTO overrides it, and the muscle calms back down. Once the muscle
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calms back down, now we can actually stretch the fascia around the muscle. Initially we can't.
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You pull on the muscle, the muscle is just pulling back. That's it. All
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you're doing is pulling against muscle until you get that release. Once that release
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happens, you stretch out that fascial network. The pressure on that fascial
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network hopefully causes an adaptive process to start, and that adaptive
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process lays down new fascia, kind of, and lengthens the muscle out.
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Now, active stretching doesn't do that. Active stretching we use as a
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progression. Now we've gotten the muscle back to its original length, so we start
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working on contracting the functional antagonist. So if I'm stretching my hip
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flexors, I'm going to start contracting my glutes to help increase the strength
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of my glute max in this new range of motion I didn't have before. Because if my
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glute max hadn't even been getting there, is it going to be stronger?
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No, strength is somewhat range of motion specific. So I strengthen my glute max as
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well as start returning optimal reciprocal inhibition. Remember, it was
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altered before. These were really overactive, shutting this down. I'm
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contracting this, and shutting these down, that starts reversing the process.
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Are you with me? The static stretching lengthens, active stretching helps return
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strength and reciprocal inhibition.
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