Flexibility Defined For this article I’ll define flexibility as the ability for a muscle or muscles to relax and to be lengthened.
Flexibility is a quality of the connective tissue within our muscles.
The better we are at controlling our muscles, being able to relax as well as contract them at will, the better we can access this flexibility.
So to stretch and improve our flexibility, part of what we need to develop is control of our muscles and part of that control is the ability to relax at will.
If we can relax the muscles that we want to stretch, we can then get on with stretching them.
Learning to Relax Part of learning to relax is learning to feel when muscles are relaxed and when they are engaged.
We can learn to feel our muscles by using and experiencing them.
If we want to learn to feel our quadriceps, the large muscle at the front of the thigh that straightens the knee and helps to flex the hip, we can practice straightening the knee and allowing it to bend.
If we do the movement repeatedly and slowly we can notice changes in sensation and then we can differentiate the sensations that indicate muscle activity and those that indicate that the muscle is relaxed.
Another way to see if a muscle is relaxed is to shake it.
If you roll your thigh from side to side and the quadriceps are relaxed, the muscle will “Roll” from side to side.
To learn to feel when a muscle is being stretched, we can slowly move in and out of a stretching position and notice the changes in sensation.
Once we’ve learned to keep our muscles relaxed while moving into a stretch we can then practice holding a stretch and steadily moving deeper into it.
Looking at the relationships of bone to bone and bone to muscle within our body: * If the two bones two which a muscle is attached are aligned with gravity or otherwise positioned so that they are stable then the muscle can relax.
If one bone is moving but the other bone is stable then depending on the type or intent of the movement that muscle can relax or slowly lengthen and then relax.
To relax muscle we can position our bones so that they are aligned with gravity or otherwise supported.
If a muscle is active or engaged, it can’t be stretched.
In a seated forward bend, if we want to add weight to stretch our hamstrings we can engage our back muscles to straighten our spine.
Doing the opposite of before, if we lift our hands off of the floor and reach them forwards we can add even more weight to our upper body But so that our muscles don’t tighten up in defense, we can do this slowly and smoothly so as to keep our hamstrings relaxed.
We can position our body and provide the muscles we are stretching with a stable foundation, we can control the weight of the parts that move so that the muscle we are stretching can relax and stay relaxed, and prior to that or during that, we can practice activating and relaxing muscle tissue so that we can feel the sensations that are associated with both.
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