STRETCH!!!
What if I told you stretching your muscles also promotes hypertrophy??? Yeah, yeah back to hypertrophy. I can't help it. I'm running out of interesting muscles to talk about. That and I'm trying to do more stretching to prevent injury/inflammation.
I've always thought of flexibility in these terms. If I'm flexible then I am less likely to "pull a hammy" (yeah sorry that clip up top is a bit annoying after a minute or two, just scroll down). We're all taught to warm up and stretch in sports growing up. It's a good thing. Tight muscles can lead to poor posture and bad biomechanics. Flexibility around the joints can lead to more explosive movements as well such as external rotation of the shoulder when throwing a ball or hip extension when kicking. Putting the joint on stretch can harness some of the springiness of the soft tissue surrounding the joint and translate into more power. Pretty cool!
Now this limited study comes along touting that stretching a muscle can lead to muscle growth. Well, as her talk explains this does make sense that it furthers the microtrauma of the muscle leading to hypertrophy. From the tendon perspective, putting extra stress on the tendon properly should lead to the same thing. Tiny tears in the connective tissue repaired to result in a stronger tendon overall. This is good. You don't want to increase strength of a muscle without having tendons that can take the load. This can often affect metabolic steroid users who gain size very fast only to tear a tendon.
What does this mean for me and you??? Just more proof stretching is good. I particularly like yoga these days. I find it to be a good workout especially for the core stabilizer muscles and adds flexibility. Yin yoga holds the poses for 2 minutes at a time and really allows you to feel those muscle fibers stretching (i.e. tearing). Statistical data shows that you don't need to hold a stretch for that long to gain the benefits, but while holding the stretch I feel that I can go deeper and further as time elapses allowing me to stretch further by the end of the 2 minutes. See the video below for more information about Carey Simpson's findings.
