What makes muscles more pliable

More specifically, flexibility refers to the ability of connective tissue muscles, ligaments, tendons ability to elongate or stretch temporarily. Limitations in flexibility can be due to tightness in the joint's muscles, as opposed to something being wrong with the actual joint itself.

Having "pliable" muscles means that they are soft and resilient. This allows them to absorb and disperse forces, helping them operate more efficiently. Unlike tight, knotted-up muscles, pliable muscles allow you to move, train, and perform to the best of your abilities while minimizing the risk of injury. Basically, by having pliable muscles, performance is optimized, enabling you to train harder, recover faster, and prevent injury. Pliable muscles have greater blood flow and oxygen saturation, cell permeability, and neuromuscular efficiency.

As a result, muscle repair and recovery are accelerated, and joint mobility is stabilized. This both helps prime the body for greater movement and performance while guarding against injury. Regular i. Foam rolling has been commonplace in fitness for going on for a decade. Its purpose is simple -- to help improve circulation, range of motion, performance, and recovery. Despite all their efforts, these athletes are much slower and less explosive, have less fine motor control and ultimately their performance is greatly diminished.

The concept of pliability has increased slightly in popularity in recent years due to Tom Brady. Pliable muscles are soft and squishy, and should be maintained through targeted, deep-force muscle work that lengthens and softens muscles. Brady promotes the use of methods such as foam rolling and bands for muscle pliability. While we agree with Brady that athletes should be focusing on pliability, we differ in approach.

At Delos Therapy we believe that applying precise pressure to target tight muscle tissue is more effective than foam rolling or other traditional methods. What we do at Delos is get rid of this rigidity with direct, precise pressure at all angles of a muscle to force the tight fibers to stretch apart.

As the fibers stretch apart, the muscle becomes more pliable and usable. When muscles are pliable, a person can perform at any age and fitness level with the same capacity and energy as when they were children.

Website designed and developed by Viktor Kilo. Also, strenuous workouts will often cause damage to the muscle's connective tissue. The tissue heals in 1 to 2 days but it is believed that the tissues heal at a shorter length decreasing muscular development as well as flexibility.

To prevent the tissues from healing at a shorter length, physiologists recommend static stretching after strength workouts. Why Contortionists Should Strengthen Why Bodybuilders Should Stretch : previous subsection Strength and Flexibility : beginning of section You should be "tempering" or balancing your flexibility training with strength training and vice versa. Do not perform stretching exercises for a given muscle group without also performing strength exercises for that same group of muscles.

Judy Alter, in her book Stretch and Strengthen , recommends stretching muscles after performing strength exercises, and performing strength exercises for every muscle you stretch. In other words: "Strengthen what you stretch, and stretch after you strengthen! When the connective tissue of a muscle is weak, it is more likely to become damaged due to overstretching, or sudden, powerful muscular contractions.

The likelihood of such injury can be prevented by strengthening the muscles bound by the connective tissue. Kurz suggests dynamic strength training consisting of light dynamic exercises with weights lots of reps, not too much weight , and isometric tension exercises.

If you also lift weights, dynamic strength training for a muscle should occur before subjecting that muscle to an intense weightlifting workout. This helps to pre-exhaust the muscle first, making it easier and faster to achieve the desired overload in an intense strength workout. Attempting to perform dynamic strength training after an intense weightlifting workout would be largely ineffective.

If you are working on increasing or maintaining flexibility then it is very important that your strength exercises force your muscles to take the joints through their full range of motion.

According to Kurz , Repeating movements that do not employ a full range of motion in the joints like cycling, certain weightlifting techniques, and pushups can cause of shortening of the muscles surrounding the joints.

Overflexibility Strength and Flexibility : previous section Flexibility : beginning of chapter It is possible for the muscles of a joint to become too flexible. According to SynerStretch , there is a tradeoff between flexibility and stability.

As you get "looser" or more limber in a particular joint, less support is given to the joint by its surrounding muscles. Excessive flexibility can be just as bad as not enough because both increase your risk of injury. Once a muscle has reached its absolute maximum length, attempting to stretch the muscle further only serves to stretch the ligaments and put undue stress upon the tendons two things that you do not want to stretch. Tendons are not even supposed to be able to lengthen.

Turn your right-hand palm up and grab your wrist with your left hand. Slowly bend to the left while exhaling, and then hold this position and continue to breathe. Make sure your shoulders are in a neutral position. Hold this for about thirty seconds, and then switch sides. Static stretches can also be done for the lower body. To do this, start sitting on the ground in a straddle position.

Turn your upper body towards your right leg, centering your chest with the line your leg makes. Slowly exhale as you lower your chest toward your knee, reaching for your calf or foot for extra support. After holding this for around twenty to thirty seconds, switch sides. In recent years, the hunt for flexibility has shifted into a desire for extra pliability, and the reasons why are clear.

Pliable muscles help promote enhanced health and fitness and will ward away any aches or pains that come along with everyday life. Limit one per person. First time guests only.

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