Stretching the Capabilities

http://www.active.com/articles/stretching-the-truth-the-science-behind-range-of-motion

January 19th, 2016

Have you ever reached down to pick up a piece of paper from the ground and found that you couldn’t do so without bending your knees?  Have you ever thought of what stretching could do for your body?  Did you know that you could lose your flexibility from old age? This article that I’m writing is on the body’s range of motion (flexibility), and the amount of flexibility you have and what it does for your ligaments.

In 1998, it was brought to the attention of the American College of Sports Medicine that, it would be necessary that people need to do flexibility exercises.  They thought this was important to face the public with because everyday motions are based on range of motion.  They also realized that being able to move into certain positions for example; a split, couldn’t just happen by saying one day,  “Hey, I can do a split!”.  One would have to typically do quad stretches or jazz splits (which is when you have one leg flat and the other bent.)  This helps you slowly ease your body to be able to perform a split or to work your body into picking up a water bottle with a flick of a wrist at a 120° angle from your elbow.  Soon, after they released this theory to the public with a fitness program to advance the area of flexibility in your body.  It also has made a huge improvement with people who have been taking this theory seriously.  Studies have shown that once people have gotten older, they were able to move much more fluently than others who hadn’t done these stretches in the past.

In the science of flexibility, it is pretty much unpredictable that everyone has to scratch their flexibility a certain amount.  Some people were proven to be ten times more flexible than others.  I can tell you that I was definitely not one of those lucky people to be born naturally flexible.  I have had to put the extra work and effort in.  As I said before, stretch is not contained in your muscles,  it’s maneuvered by the joint and the ligaments in that area that are moving across.  So, when you do these stretches you don’t want to do the most insane stretch right away, rather you slowly but surely get that extra flex in.  If you did that extreme stretch constantly, it has been proven that you will wear out the ligament and joints in your body which could lead you to have osteoarthritis (joint degeneration).  So I would definitely pick up a yoga mat if I were you to ensure that your body will be capable of having range of motion once you get older.  Life’s too short to miss out on everyday things!  I chose this article because I love being active.  I very easily become agitated and antsy after a while not doing anything athletic.  After learning about flexibility and its effect on the body, it also has made me wonder if I was keeping my body healthy and in shape enough.  I truly didn’t realize that you could lose your range of motion the older you become from not stretching your flexibility capabilities.  I previously thought losing your flexibility was because you just got more fragile as you had gotten past certain rites of passages.  I learned that you don’t get your range of motion from your muscles.  Muscles are just for strength, being able to carry a mug or a child.  Range of motion comes from your flexibility.  Remind me to do more forward folds so that way I can pick up stuff more easily when I drop something on the ground without bending my legs!

I believe that this site’s credibility is reliable because they constantly update this website and it’s not like anyone can write their own opinion for this blog unless hacked.  This is because it was only used by Michaelene Conner, a certified scientist for the American College of Sports Medicine, the largest exercise science organization in the world.  I hope after reading this, you have taken this into consideration, that way you can keep your range of motion healthy and live flexibly!