What’s This Research About?
When it comes to the physical practice of yoga, you might have heard it requires large ranges of motion (ROM) throughout your body’s main joints. Whether your aim with yoga is flexibility or not, one could benefit from knowing more about this topic. Life requires you to move your arms, legs, and spine – so that they’re fully functional for things you like to do. This is one reason to know more about how to maintain or improve the ROM your life demands.
It is hypothesized that (optimal) flexibility has an effect on health and/or fitness. However, this relationship is still quite unclear. What is of importance is that if you want to maintain or improve your flexibility in terms of ROM it is useful to know which technique is most effective, how often and for how long you should practice that technique. This review intends to answer those questions.
The authors had two aims with this paper:
1) investigating long-term stretching interventions’ effect on ROM
2) the relationship between changes in ROM and stretching techniques as well as frequency and duration.
TITLE: The Relation Between Stretching Typology and Stretching Duration: The Effects on Range of Motion
PUBLICATION: International Journal of Sports Medicine
DATE: May 2018
AUTHORS : Thomas E, Bianco A, Paoli A, Palma A.
Ballistic stretching: a form of static or dynamic stretching in a bouncing motion.
Long-term stretching: In this review it is defined as performing a stretching intervention for 4 weeks or more.
PNF stretching: proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF) is a form of stretching that involves a passive stretch as well as a contraction of the muscle being targeted.
Range of motion: The ability to voluntarily move a joint through its full range of motion.
Static stretching: a stretch that is held for a period of time, at a challenging but comfortable position, which can be divided into active and passive.
Statistics
Mean change: is the average change over an entire data set.
How the data was categorized by time spent stretching (duration):
Total time spent stretching per week – less than 5 min, between 5-10 min, more than 10 min.
Total time spent stretching per session – less than 60s, between 60-120s, more than 120s.
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