Stretching, what does it really do?

S

skinydudesk8te

New member
I realize we are told to stretch to relax tense tissue and or increase our flexibility. However, every day I stretch I really don't see any real improvement. I see initial improvement and feel better or relaxed but the next day I'm back to square one, and the older I get the less flexible I seem to get.

My question is does anyone really know what we are doing internally to our muscles, tissues, cellular level etc when we stretch???

Should we be asking ourselves why we are tight, and maybe that our body is doing it for a reason?
 
Stretching is beneficial, and, yes, you need to do it every day to keep the benefits. Stretch for a few minutes, get a few hours of feeling good. Sounds like a decent trade-off to me.
 
Thanks for the post, but it does not answer what stretching is really doing. I mean we don't have to stretch other major muscles, like the ones we use to breathe, or our fingers, etc yet we use these constantly. Why don't they get tight, and yet we rarely get injured there and the ones we stretch is where we get injured. So is the body smart and really trying to protect us?
 
Stretching is simply extending the muscle to its full length. It can pull out knots and stiffness.

Your fingers actually don't have any muscles in them, they are controlled a little bit by muscles in the hand and mostly by muscles in the forearm. And my forearms do occasionally become stiff and sore.

The breathing muscles usually don't need any special stretching because they get a "full stretch" every time you take a deep breath.

If you think there is something more going on than stiff muscles, maybe you should look into it with a doctor.
 
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