Why Stretching is Important: Part 2
In this blog, we’ll look more at the relationship between flexibility training and injury prevention. There’s plenty to expand on in this, particularly in regards to research, but much more on that to come…
Soft tissue injuries are the second most common reason for sport injury hospitalisations (fractures are number 1). These type of injuries happen when the demands placed upon our body exceed our capacity to handle the demands. For obvious reasons, the types of soft tissue injuries we will focus on here are tears and strains. These usually occur when a muscle is lengthened too quickly, or with too much load. The injury can occur as a result of contact, or a result of the athletes own movement.
For example, one of the most common sporting injuries (moreso for men), are groin strains, particularly adductor longus tears.
The non contact mechanism for this injury comes down to a rapid muscle activation, during an increase in muscle tendon unit length. This injury could be further classified into open chain or closed chain mechanisms.
The open chain injury could occur for example during a kicking movement, where the muscle undergoes rapid lengthening as it transitions through cocking and backswing phases (?)
A closed chain injury would occur for example, when the leg is in contact with the ground, and the athlete rapidly changes direction, such as in a cutting manoeuvre. (in another section bring up tri planar stuff-maybe in 3d section and refer back to this).
The contact version of this would see rate of change, and load accelerated, as another player for example, fell on the leg.
In both instances, a decreased ROM is seen as a risk factor for injury. Interestingly, it is common to see stretching and eccentrically loading the muscle as a rehab protocol/prehab, however, this commonly involves exercises that resemble movements similar to the splits.
The problem with this is, these injuries don’t necessarily occur in one plane of motion.
A kicking movement for example, sees the adductor loaded as the hip moves from extension to flexion, in an externally rotated position. Having a strategy to not only increase ROM in these directions, but also to load and learn to control these movements, is a sound strategy, and a large part of the focus of the system outlined in my book.
It’s important to clarify, in this regard, sitting in a wide leg stretch isn’t enough to prevent these injuries, as much as it isn’t enough to just make the adductors “stronger.” Muscle adaptations are specific to variations such as angle and rate of change. The beauty of a well designed stretching program, is that we can not only fine tune our positions to account for various angles of action, and planes of motion, but also for rate of change, direction of force, and progressive load, as well as rate of change under tension.
It should become clear, stretching is as much not one thing, as much as exercise is.
The key is solid programming and progression through various stages of stretching and the continuum with strength training and neural control, as well see.