Extreme Stretching

Ok, after many questions from clients and others I’ve decided to take some pics of this extreme demanding form of “stretching”. (I will add more later!)

Background: (some might refer to this study: J Appl Physiol 75: 1263-1271, 1993)

The thoughts of Extreme Stretching as an Hyperplasia induced type of training, might be a little bit to positive. But there is a potential to this, even if studies have found that hyperplasia not might be happening in the human body, more reasearch must be done on this subject. I’ve seen so much results on this type of training (stretching) muscles seems to get a moore trained and “grainy” look. I’ve seen the best results in triceps on my body.

So what happens? It’s not a typical static stretch of the muscle. This is a stress on the musclefascia with weight added, so pretty different from traditional stretching. So the weight adds more stretch to the musclefascia, making it more likley to “expand” and further growht to the muscle could be a result.

Even if this seems to be a little “tricky science” think about this. There are several studies claiming that the time the muscle is put under stress is crucial for maximum development of musclemass. And this surley put the muscle under tension a pretty long time. A Extreme Stretching for 60sec, will make up for about 3sets x 10reps (i thinking of a typical excentric phase of 2sec), and we all know that the excentric phase is the most productive.

Add Extreme Stretching to your workout schedule and when you do this you might want to cut down on a couple of sets, to make sure you don’t overtrain.  

Triceps: 60seconds, and if needed add weight to the bar, myself use +5kg on each side. Pain…

Biceps alternative 1 60sec, make sure the shoulder line is below the dumbell. If you manage the weight, adjust it upwards next training session.

Shoulders

 Well this one is not with any added weight (with bodyweight though). Make sure the forearm is in line with the dipmachine. Of course any piece of equipment could be used, just make sure you can add some of your bodyweight on the shoulder by lowering the legs a bit and twist the body in the opposite direction (from the shoulder thats being stretched), 60sec (this isn’t a magical number it’s just a number, and a reminder, the time a muscles is exposed to stress can be related to muscle growth.

Quads

60sec, make sure you experience a deep stress in the origin and the insertion of the quads.

Alternative 1 – in smith machine

Alternative 2 – In hack-lift / Hack Squat or whatever you wanna call it.  Often when I do this after training legs, I can only hold the top (picture) position like 15sec, then I lower a bit, and another bit untill i reach the bottom position. This is extreme… and it hurts like hell. But I can honestly say that my legs have been “sharper” since I started with this.

More to come…

//SETH RONLAND