Stretching One Limb Helps Strengthen the Opposite One
I hate to beat everyone to death with the stretching research on here, but this study is just way too cool not to discuss.
We’re in no position to say what’s right or wrong regarding stretching, but this particular study suggests static stretching could actually increase strength – in both the stretched AND contralateral muscle!
In short, researchers found that without any resistance training, statically stretching one calf led to a 29% increase in strength in the stretched calf, and an 11% strength increase in the NON-STRETCHED calf of untrained individuals. Wild!
They attributed the findings to neurological stimulation (Remember: A large part of strength is due to neurological adaptations, particularly in the untrained.): Passive stretching activates afferent activity and increases neural output of the muscle spindles, resulting in both increased strength AND a crosstraining effect.
What the heck does this mean?!?! In laymen’s terms, if you have an injured arm or leg that you can’t train, simply stretching the healthy one may help you maintain its strength – at least the part derived from neural components.
Now THAT is cool.
Filed under: Did You Know?, exercise research, stretching
While I find it a little hard to believe that stretching your right leg can strengthen your left, I believe that the amount of stretching of the one calf that they did in the study could be the reason for the strength increase in the stretched leg. First, I think that the warming effect from the amount of stretching the researchers did to the one calf may have better prepared that leg for the single leg calf raise as opposed to the other leg that received no stretching. Second I agree that the activation of the muscle spindles due to the prolonged stretching directly increased the strength in the stretched calf, as if it almost “wanted” to contract after all of that stretching. GO STRETCH!!
Great points, Ryan. And your comment will lead nicely into our discussion on Monday regarding pre-workout stretching recommendations
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