Stretches for Stress Management

What if everything you knew about stretching was WRONG?

You are likely operating under the mistaken assumption that strength and flexibility are two different things. Well let me be the first to tell you that nothing could be further from the truth!>

I used to think the same way. It wasn’t until several years into my study of Asian martial culture that I really began to understand the proper relationship between strength and flexibility.

In order to develop flexibility, or the proper range of motion for any given joint, you have to be able to relax your muscles. In order to correctly use stretches for stress management the stretches chosen must achieve this goal … and not all of them do.

One of the ways that our body responds to stress is to store tension in our muscles. By “storing tension”, I mean that certain muscles will contract or shorten and not relax back to their original length.

When stretches for stress management actually work, it’s because they help us to learn how to consciously relax those muscles which are storing tension. This is the basic premise of methods like hatha yoga or pilates for improving health.

But here’s the kicker, the real secret that’s not taught in you average run-of-the-mill yoga classes …

… strength and flexibility are the same thing.

It’s true! Strength and flexibility are simply two side of the same coin.

“Grady, what in the heck are you talking about?” I can hear you ask.

Let me explain. Most of you probably don’t understand what “strength” really is. Strength is simply a measure of how hard you can contract a given muscle. And you know what?

How hard you can contract a given muscle has nothing to do with it’s size!

Your ability to contract a muscle with a given degree of force is based solely on your degree of neurological connection to that muscle. Strength is fundamentally a function of neurology, not of muscle mass.

Your ability to relax or lengthen a muscle is based on the exact same neurological connection as your ability to contact or shorten a muscle.

In other words, strength and flexibility are the same … both abilities are fundamentally based on the same neurological connection to muscle.

Therefore, for the purposes of a discussion of stretches for stress management, we can redefine flexibility as “strength throughout the range of motion of a given joint”. Now that we understand what flexibility is, how do we develop stretches for stress management based on that understanding?

Take a common stretch that everyone understands like the splits - if you don’t know what the splits are, take a look at the gentleman with the laptop in the picture at the top of this article.

Most of us can’t do the splits all the way to the ground like in this picture. Our groin muscles (more correctly, our inner-thigh adductors) are not strong enough to relax sufficiently to allow our full, healthy range of motion.

How do we strengthen them? The best method is a kind of isometric strength exercise known as Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation stretching or PNF stretching. Quite a mouthful, I know. What is it?

PNF stretching alternates conscious lengthening/relaxation of a muscle with an isometric contraction of a muscle (“isometric” simply means a contraction of a muscle where no movement of the joint takes place – trying to push an object too heavy for you to move would be an example of an isometric contraction.

Go back to our example of the splits. In order to stretch your groin muscles the PNF way, you simply relax into the splits as much as you can without any strain or pain. When you reach your “sticking” point, then you slowly contract the muscles of your groin in the opposite direction of the stretch, as if trying to pull your legs back together.

After that isometric contraction, you relax again into the stretch. You will find that the first few times you do this you will be able to relax more deeply into the stretch than when you began the exercise, proof of the neurological connection between strength and flexibility.

Take the time to try to apply the PNF stretching method to your stretches for stress management. I guarantee you that you will find this method of stretching 1000 times more effective than what you are used to doing, and far more effective for stress management.

This kind of unique perspective on stretches for stress management is one of many HARDCORE Stress Management™ techniques reviewed right here.

And when you're ready to step it up a notch, take a look at my HARDCORE Stress Management™ mega-course - you'll be glad you did!