Flexibility Notes

Flexibility Facts

Lesson Objectives

• Describe the characteristics of flexibility.
• Explain the benefits of good flexibility.
• Explain the importance of balancing strength and flexibility exercises.
• Explain how the fitness principles of overload, progression, and specificity apply to flexibility.

Lesson Vocabulary

• Hypermobility: The ability to extend the knee, elbow, thumb, or wrist joint past a straight line.
• Joint Laxity: When the supporting tissue around a joint allows the bones to move in ways other than intended, it is described as joint laxity, or looseness.
• Range of Motion (ROM): The amount of movement you can make in a joint.

What Is Flexibility?

• Flexibility is the ability to move your joints through a full range of motion (ROM).
• A joint is a place in the body where bones come together.
  • Examples: ankles, knees, and hips; knuckles, wrist, elbows, and shoulders; vertebrae in the spine
• Joint types:
  • Hinge joints (knees and elbows): permit movement in two directions.
  • Ball and socket joints (hip and shoulder): allow movement in all directions.
• Range of motion (ROM) is the amount of movement you can make in a joint.

Benefits of Good Flexibility

• Flexibility is often overlooked but offers many health benefits.

Improved Function

• Everyone needs a minimum amount of flexibility to maintain health and mobility.
• Additional flexibility is needed for certain activities and professions.
  • Dancers and gymnasts need to be very flexible to perform their routines.
  • Plumbers, painters, and dentists often need to bend and stretch.
  • Some musicians need flexible fingers and wrists.
• Flexibility allows a longer backswing in throwing and striking movements, enabling a faster forward swing.
• In weightlifting, shot put, and similar sports, greater backward movement may produce more power.

Improved Health and Wellness

• Stretching exercises can help prevent injury and muscle soreness.
• Benefits for specific conditions:
  • Flexible musicians are less likely to have joint pain.
  • Stretching can alleviate menstrual cramps.
  • It can prevent or relieve leg cramps and shin-splints.
• Stretching short muscles helps improve posture, which helps prevent or relieve back pain and reduces fatigue.
• Stretching a muscle can help it relax.

Characteristics of Flexibility

• Factors like heredity influence flexibility.

Body Build and Flexibility

• Anatomical differences affect flexibility.
• Compare your scores with your own previous scores and seek to improve.
• Short vs. Tall people:
  • Shorter person tends to have relatively short legs and trunk but also tends to have short arms.
  • Tall person tends to have longer legs and trunk, as well as longer arms.
• Females tend to be more flexible than males and younger people tend to be more flexible than older people.
• Regular stretching exercises when you are young is to reduce the risk of joint problems when you are older.
• Good flexibility enhances performance in a variety of tasks for people of all ages.

Hypermobility

• Hypermobility is an unusually large range of motion in certain joints, often referred to as being "double jointed."
• Hypermobility is the ability to extend the knee, elbow, thumb, or wrist joint past a straight line, as if the joint could bend backward.
• It is usually inherited and more common in certain groups.
• Some hypermobile individuals are prone to joint injuries and may be more likely to develop arthritis.
• Hypermobile individuals might easily lock when the arms straighten, making it difficult to unlock the elbows to begin the downward movement.

Joint Laxity

• Joint laxity is when the supporting tissue around a joint allows the bones to move in unintended ways.
• Laxity occurs when ligaments are overstretched, often from injury or incorrect exercise.
• Knee joint laxity may lead to knee sprains, torn cartilage, or a dislocated kneecap.
• Ligaments cannot be strengthened by exercises, but strengthening muscles around the joint can help reduce looseness.
• Joint laxity can be a cause of hypermobility.

Balancing Strength and Flexibility

• Balance strength and flexibility exercises.
• Exclusive strength exercises can lead to a loss of normal range of motion, known as being muscle-bound.
• Flexibility exercises alone may make joints susceptible to injury due to the lack of strong muscles to reinforce ligaments.
• A balanced exercise program includes both strength and flexibility exercises for all muscles to apply equal force on all sides of a joint.
• People commonly use flexors (muscles on the front of the body) a great deal because many daily activities emphasize the use of those muscles.
• The pull of these strong muscles results in the body hunching forward.
• Stretch the strong, short muscles on the front of the body and strengthen the weak, long, relatively unused muscles on the back of the body to avoid permanently hunching over.

Table 10.1: Muscles That Need the Most Stretching

• Most people eventually begin to develop a hunched-over posture often called humpback at some point in life.
• Upper back muscles become overstretched in people with this postural problem, they should avoid further stretching of those muscles.
• It is important to keep your abdominal muscles strong but most people do not need to stretch them, In fact, if the abdominals are stretched they begin to sag and the abdomen protrudes, leading to poor posture.
• Each person must evaluate his or her own needs to avoid stretching already overstretched muscles and avoid strengthening muscles that are already so strong that they are out of balance with their opposing muscles.
• Keeping muscles on opposites sides of a joint in balance helps them pull with equal force in all directions.
• Such a balance helps align your body parts properly, ensuring good posture.

Fitness Principles and Flexibility

• The principles of overload, progression, and specificity apply to flexibility.

Principle of Overload

• You need to stretch your muscles longer than normal to increase your flexibility.
• To stretch a muscle, you need to lengthen it more than you do in your daily activities.
• To achieve this kind of stretch, you usually need a force greater than your own opposing muscles.
• For example, if you want to stretch your chest muscles, you cannot get an overload just by pulling your arms back and holding them in that position. You need additional force, such as your own body weight, when you put your arms on either side of a doorframe and lean forward.
  • You can use another body part, a partner, or a weight to assist in the stretch.
  • Be sure to give feedback when a partner helps you stretch so that he or she can apply the proper amount of force.

Principle of Progression

• You need to gradually increase your exercise intensity.
• You can increase intensity by stretching farther as you gain flexibility.
• You may also progress by gradually increasing the amount of time you hold the stretch or the number of repetitions you perform.
• Eventually you will achieve your flexibility goals. Then you need to maintain the flexibility you have achieved.

Principle of Specificity

• Flexibility exercises improve only the specific muscles at the specific joints that you stretch.
• To develop overall flexibility, you must stretch all the muscles that need stretching.

Maintaining Flexibility

• Once you have reached an acceptable level of flexibility for your muscles, you must continue to move all of your joints and muscles through this new and improved range of motion on a regular basis.
• If you do not use the range of motion you have available in a joint, the muscles will begin to shorten again and you will lose that flexibility.