Stretching Through DOMS

[Guest Malik]

Would the body be able to adapt to this frequency of hard stretching everyday? Also, could this help me achieve greater rom in stretches faster?

[Craig]

Hi Malik,

This is a topic I've been very interested in lately. Coming from a Chinese Martial Arts background where the teacher wasn't exposed to the cultural conditioning around DOMS that we have in our society, we were always made to train through any soreness, and daily training was a must. We had a saying, for every day you miss, you need 3 more days of practice to catch up to where you would have been. There was definitely a point where most things stopped hurting after long enough exposure, although this time was somewhere between 3 and 6 months.

I am currently doing daily ballistic and loaded stretching, and have been for the last 20 days or so. It's taken about 15 days or so for the majority of the soreness to stop, and it still comes back every 3 or 4 days, but I have a feeling as I get into it more, the soreness will be more sparse.

So short answer is yes, I believe the body can adapt to frequent intensive stretching (and other muscular work too), as long as it's not too over the top like 1RMs constantly etc. Ive also made more progress in the last 20 days than I have in the last 10 months.

[Emmet Louis]

Personally I find with doms. I don't lose any flexibility but its just sorer to get to my full limits

[Jim Pickles]

Yet my experience (with relaxation or loaded stretching) is that if I continue on a daily basis when I am sore, not only does my range progressively decrease, but I may easily pull a muscle. And if I pull a muscle the only thing is to do NOTHING until the soreness or pain goes - if I try to work through it I just delay recovery - which may take many weeks or months. I find it just not worth risking. Clearly my experience is diametrically opposed to yours and the Chinese method. What is different? Am I just a wimp? Are my "relaxation" stretches too intense (they may be up to the max that I can stand in the straddle splits machine)? Should I be 50 years younger? Should I do ballistic stretches instead?

[Craig]

Jim: My first reaction would be to say that you are possibly lacking strength if muscles are being pulled that easily. From what I've seen, you're extremely flexible, but to build strength you would probably have to go back to mid range flexibility. Think of holding a side split with no hands supporting you so its just the leg muscles, and how high you would need to do this safely. If you continued to practice this, and learned to practise through discomfort but not through pain, I think your tolerance would slowly increase.. The same with a front split or any other loaded kind of stretch. Then think of doing that with added weight. So putting a muscle under stretch and then adding load, which in the first instance would mean taking away all forms of support, whether that be the ground (as is the case in your front split) or your hands. This is something that needs to start extremely slowly and in positions that are much closer to where you are able to express strength. The key is to slowly move away from gentle and relaxed and towards vigorous and loaded. Not to say that soft and relaxed isn't also a necessary quality, it is a very necessary and useful quality, just a different side of the same coin to address. Also please give me your capacity to be soft and relaxed

The ballistic stretching works in the same way, you can easily do it daily if you don't push it too hard, and then slowly build it up to being able to do it daily and vigorously. If you're at the point where the next day you are in pain, rather than just discomfort, then its simply a case of too much intensity the previous day. It needs to be dialled back a bit, and then built back up. The key i think is to not stagnate with how much load you're using. (either more weight in the loaded stretches, or more vigor in the ballistic stretches). Start with what you can handle and build it up over time.

[Craig]

PS: i firmly believe that age has absolutely nothing to do with it, besides the process taking possibly a little bit longer. I have seen sedentary 70 year olds build up to being able to do muscle ups on the rings in 3 - 4 years, so its not even that much longer than a younger person, and I think it's more a matter of mindset...if you tell yourself you can't do it, you probably won't ever get there!

[Jim Pickles]

Craig - you are possibly quite right. I go for maximum flexibility using maximal passive stretches while keeping the muscles as relaxed as possible. I dont usually try to contract the muscles near the end of the range because they get very tender. So many thanks for the strengthening suggestion which I'll try,

Jim.

[Edd]

This subject is quite relevant in that I've experienced severe / strong feelings of DOMs in many places of my body including my glutes and quads and this has been from cycling or jiu jitsu but generally only due to the intensity being out of the ordinary.  I notice in Hatha yoga I sometimes get mild DOMs in the belly of my hamstrings and I believe it is mostly from holds where my hamstrings are contributing to holding the weight of my torso up while in full or near full extension.  It is usually after a session of feeling more flexible than usual but the next day my flexibility is worse while sore.  This was the most I've ever experienced DOMs in my hamstrings until:

A couple of days ago I did 108 sun salutations which is definitely out of the ordinary for me!  This resulted in severe hamstring DOMs which today the 2nd day being worse.  Also affected was my glutes to a lesser degree and triceps, deltoids and pectorals.  Now I've never had such DOMs in my hamstrings and for me it severely restricts my flexibility. I was about a foot away from touching the floor the following morning and walking a bit robotic.

Is this due to weak hamstrings?  I was doing a lot of bent legged forward bends due to my flexiblity (most days I can't quite get my palms flat to the floor when straight legs).  My glutes usually seem to work well enough and my hip flexors are in fairly good shape - I've had DOMs in my glutes many times on and off so they definitely activate enough.

I'm just wondering whether strengthening my hamstrings may help with improving my flexibility as I've typically found breakthroughs in flexibility once I've managed to strengthen a muscle group.  My hamstrings don't seem to like being loaded up while being stretched.

[Craig]

Easiest way to find out if strength is the limiting factor is to do some strength work

 

Try a 30 - 45 day challenge of single leg good mornings. 3 - 5 sets of either 10 - 30 reps or 10 - 60s holds. You can alternate reps and holds each day if you like, or you can do then together where you put the hold on the 10th rep. Keep the back straight or in small extension.

[Edd]

Hi Craig,

What actual exercise are you suggesting?  :-) I'm guessing it is obvious but clearly not obvious enough for me.

On the 4th day my hamstring soreness had gone but I was left with just pain - Slightly more on my right side despite the soreness feeling equal the first few days.  Yesterday (7th day) the pain was still affecting my cycling a fair bit but today I woke up feeling a lot better and cycling felt almost normal.  I guess it was more than just micro tears of the muscles.

[AndeL]

'Single leg good morning' is the exercise he mentioned 

[Edd]

Ha thanks!  That went straight over my head like all gym talk.  I just skimmed over that presuming it was some reference to doing it in the morning :-)

So a single leg good morning looks similar to warrior 3 in yoga.  Whenever I do that I often end up sore in the belly of my hamstrings so weakness it probably is?  Glutes work solidly.

[Craig]

Balance one one leg with a locked knee, hinge at the hips as deep as you can without flexion in the spine, then come back up to standing (straight back the whole time). Do not use the other leg to counter balance.