| By Vaughn Gray
 There’s more of a science to stretching than most people think. In a traditional stretch, you place your body in a position in which one or more muscles are extended and stretched, and wait for those muscles to adapt to this position by lengthening out. Simple as this seems, there are actually some complex dynamics taking place in your muscles when you stretch this way. Once you understand these dynamics, you can see how another approach to stretching can be a lot more effective.
A tradiitonal stretrch in which you just extend a muscle and hold it in an extended position doesn't work by simply mechanically elongating that muscle. Instead, this type of stretch works by stimulating a receptor in the stretched muscle's tendons (the part of the muscle that attaches to bones) called a Golgi Tendon Organ or “GTO”. Golgi tendon organs are tension sensitive receptors that respond to tension in a muscle's tendon by causing that muscle to relax and stretch out. When you place a muscle in a tradiitonal stretch, you place tension on that muscle and it's tendon. The Golgi tendon organ in that muscle responds to that tension by relaxing the muscle.
Golgi tendon organs, which work to relax and extend muscles, have antagonists called “muscle spindles” which work to contract and shorten muscles. Every major muscle in the body has both Golgi tendon organs and muscle spindles. When muscle spindles are stimulated, they cause the muscle they are in to contract. Muscle spindles are stimulated whenever they are streched by a muscle extending. At this point you might notice a problem. When a muscle is stretched, that muscle extends. The increase in tension caused by this extension should stimulate the GTO to relax that muscle. But at the same time, the stretch will also stimulate the muscle spindle, causing that muscle to contract. If these two organs balance each other, how does the muscle ever stretch out?
This is precisely the problem with traditional stretching. It ends up stimulating both GTO's and muscle spindles. If you hold a stretch long enough, the GTO will generally win the tug of war with the muscle spindle, and the muscle you are stretching will partially extend, but this is not an especially effective or efficient way to stretch.
An ideal stretch would stimulate the GTO causing a muscle to relax without at the same time stimulating the muscle spindle, causing that muscle to contract. But how would such a stretch work? The answer is a bit counter-intuitive. The way to stretch a muscle without causing its spindle to contract and fight the stretch is to first actively contract that muscle, and then actively extend it. As complex as this might sound in theory, it’s actually pretty simple in practice.
In a nutshell, contracting a muscle turns the muscle's spindle on (just like extending it). A muscle spindle can only hold a contraction for a limited amount of time before it naturally starts to relax. As soon as this time interval passes, a muscle can be extended without turning its spindle on as readily. Contracting the “reciprocal” of any given muscle (the muscle that does the opposite job, more on this below) also deactivates the muscle spindle of the muscle you are trying to stretch. You can combine these two techniques to produce a highly effective, highly efficient stretch by placing a muscle that you want to stretch into an extended position, first contracting that muscle, and then actively extending that muscle by contracting its reciprocal. This technique is called active stretching, and the details of how to apply it are explained below.
If absolutely none of this made sense, don't stress it. Actually trying active stretching for your self will make it all clear. All of the stretches in this tutorial are active stretches of one sort or another.
Stretching, Alignment, and Posture
Before we get started with actual stretches, we need to make one more important point about the science of stretching. Stretching alters the length and tension of muscles. Most muscles in the body move joints. As a result, changing the length or tension of muscles tends to have an effect on the alignment of joints. Proper joint alignment is critical to both the health and the performance of your body. Misaligned joints are more susceptible to injury and compromise the function of the body. An intelligent stretching program can improve your joint alignment and overall posture, helping you build a more functional, injury-proof, pain free body. Our Improving Posture and Alignment tutorial details a program for correcting joint alignment using exercises and the stretches outlined below. We recommend that you read through this tutorial to get a sense of how the stretches covered here will affect the alignment of your body.
Stretching Program
This program provides active stretches for every major muscle group in the body that most people need to stretch, starting from the calves and working up the body to the muscles of the neck.
The Calf
When stretching your calves, you want to be sure to stretch in proper alignment. This means you should always stretch your calves with your feet pointed straight in front of you and your knee caps lined up directly over the midline of your feet. Stretching in proper alignment will help resolve any postural issues at your ankle or knee.
The calf is composed of two separate muscles, the soleus and the gastrocnemus or “gastroc” for short. The soleus forms the lower portion of the calf, the gastroc the upper portion. These two muscles need to be stretched separately.
Active Gastroc Stretch
To perform an active gastroc stretch, assume Position 1 by placing one foot forward, one foot back with both toes pointing dead straight ahead. Shift most of your weight to your front leg, and lean forward as far as you can without picking your back heel up off of the ground (if you can lean up against something like a wall or a railing, this will be even more effective). The farther apart you get your feet, and the further you lean forward, the deeper the stretch in your rear leg will be. When you've found a point of stretch that is comfortable, activate your rear calf muscle by raising your heel slightly off the ground and pressing into the ground with the ball of your rear foot (Position 2). Keep your back leg straight as you do this. Raise your heel a few inches off of the ground.
Once you've raised your heel up a few inches (Position 2), reverse this motion, lowering your heel slowly back to the ground. When your rear heel gets down to the ground again, lean forward a little bit, deepening the stretch in your rear calf. Repeat this sequence 6-8 times, continuing to work your back heel up and down, alternately extendning and contracting your gastroc, for 20 to 30 seconds.
You can also do an active gastroc stratch in a similar fashion on the stairs or any raised surface. To begin, position your right foot on a stair such that the ball of your foot is just on the edge of the stair, and your heel is hanging off. Shift most of your body weight to your right side, and rest your left foot on the same stair. Drop your right heel as far below the plane of the stairs as you can. Contract the muscles of your shin (try to actually raise the top of your foot up) to push your heel down further. When you reach the end of your range of motion, hold for 2 seconds. After two seconds, contract your calf and push up for a second, raising your heel an inch or two and hold this position for one second. After a second in this position (heel a little higher, calf contracted), reverse this motion and actively try to push your heel down again using the muscles of your shin. Move between the stretched and extended position at a slow, controlled pace.
Stretch each calf with one of these active gastroc stretchs for 20 - 30 seconds, then repeat one or two more times.
Active Soleus Stretch
To target the soleus (the lower portion of the calf), perform the exact same motion as you did for the gastroc, only keep your back knee bent about 15 degrees throughout. The soleus can also be stretched on the staris. Again, the motion is identical to the gastroc stretch on the stairs, except the knee is held bent throughout.
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