So a muscle is made up of a lot of muscle fibers weaved together. A muscle “works” by contracting from an elongated position to a shortened position. However, often some of the fibers get stuck in the contracted position (a knot in your muscle) – when they are like that, they can’t really contract. So you are only getting a percentage of your overall muscle output when you use it (yes you can strength and get a bigger muscle, but you are only drawing from the functional muscles at are relaxing/contracting – so it’s always a percentage of the whole). It’s kind of like having a 6 cylinder engine, but having three cylinders that are not firing. If the knot is not fixed for a long period of time (months, years) your brain “forgets” how to access that inert piece muscle because every time is signal nerve impulses to that muscle nothing happens and eventually the brain just gives up on it.

Resistance stretching does two major things… first through mashing and eccentric stretching/strengthening you loosen out previously inert/tight muscle fiber knots. The second is that you are retraining yourself to regain “access” to those muscles through rarely used nerve pathways (kind of like teaching yourself to raise only one eyebrow or wiggle your ears – where in the beginning you just don’t know what nerve impulse to make to work them alone). This is exactly what major accident victims have to go through after they have been in bed for weeks/months in traction – (i.e. relearn how to walk and use their muscles again after weeks of non-use and the brain has forgotten).

Why is resistance stretching better than traditional stretching? Because unlike traditional stretching, which typically stretches either the parts of your muscle that are already willing to relax and your tendons/ligaments, it specifically targets those knots, those inert bundles of muscle fibers. That’s where the resistance is important. It’s a little hard to visual, but image you have a piece of rubber band like this —==—. The single dashes represent the functional fibers of your muscle and the double is the inert muscle fibers. If you pull on the this rubber band… you will see the thing parts stretch, and the thick part stay basically the same ( ___==___ ). That’s what I think is happening to your muscle too under a passive stretch. However, if you tense the muscle as you stretch it it becomes like this <<>> and now the tension is put on the inert fibers and they are pulled, woken up (you kind of “feel” them being pulled), and forced to relax (once you are aware of the tight spot you can start to mentally relax them, controlled breathing helps a lot). Ending up something like <<>>.

Anyway that’s my really poor attempt at an explanation.

The concept of increased functionality is one that intrigued me about Resistance Stretching as well. While I don’t know how stretching can influence this exactly, there’s no doubt that the same set of muscles can be more or less functional. I know that for martial arts, good intermuscular and intramuscular coordination is absolutely essential and these factors basically amount to “muscular functionality” – quite simply, if you want to throw a punch, how cooperative are all the muscle in your body being? You can typically see beginners being very tense around their legs, hips and shoulders and that’s why they can’t throw a strong punch.
So if Resistance Stretching increases muscular functionality, it’s invaluable for martial arts (and probably any sport).

Hi, I’m in the 4-5 range and had similar experience to yours in your Part I post. That is I got some initial flexibility improvements, but it tapered off quickly. I’ve done power yoga, iyengar yoga, bikram yoga, pilates again I still experienced that quick diminishing returns of flexibility gains like you. She mentioned that there was a studio in the Bay Area that offered it…

I stumbled upon resistance stretching by accident much like you… I heard Dara Torres mention it a few times and didn’t think about it for a couple of months until I got into a conversation with a friend who is a cyclist and sports therapist. I had talked about how I was looking to improve my flexibility and mentioned resistance stretching as something I would like to try next… she mentioned that there was a studio that practiced it near by.

So I signed up for a local group class and was unimpressed by it (low intensity, minimal gains). I also skimmed a copy of “The Genius of Flexibility” at the studio are was also really put off like you about the fantastical claims the book made. However, the instructor (Tom Longo) told me to give a private session a try. I figured it was worth the experiment (it’s not cheap) as like you I like to explore things.

So I would like to say private session with a good instructor is very different than self-stretching for two reasons… first a stretching partner can apply leverage at angles that you can never really do yourself. The second is a trained resistance stretcher really can angle you arms/legs/torso isolate different muscles which is also important.

I’ve been doing it for about 6 months now and I can tell you my body is completely different – but it’s important to note that my physical flexibility range is not significant more than it was before… but without sounding too crazy, it is much more… functional.

So being able to so splits and stuff is mostly loose joints. Resistance stretching seems to focus and having soft and loose muscles. Stiff, crunchy muscles with knots in them are be definition a bit “tighter” and more importantly “less functional” (since a muscle contracts to provide power, it cannot contract fully if part of it is already tight and knotted). Think of it like an engine with only half of the cylinders firing… so anyways the things I notice are more “functional”… for instance I play ice hockey, snowboard, and rock climb.

One of the first things I noticed was that on skates I was able to power through a hard turn on my right leg (which has a somewhat bad knee due to a couple of ACL/MCL sprains). Previously, the knee would buckle or give out or just refuse to drive into the turn that hard (I’ve spent years strengthening it with lots of single legged squats so it was decently strong)… but after a session or two… I sudden noticed much better “functionality” there. Also, I would notice much more easily if I lost the “functionality” due to tightness and realize that I needed to “resistance stretch” my psoas, quad, and gluts again to get it back.

The second thing I noticed is increased functionality in my psoa (inner hip flexors). These were really not functional (although apparently since the rector femoris part of the quad is also a hip flexor I could get away with it). I would notice this on long run (5-8 miles) that my hips would really ach and burn. Also long mountain hikes would also cause my hips to ache. I thought this was just me getting old as I was almost 30 (30 this year) … but no, it was tight/non-functional hip flexors. After a few months, I could do a 6-8 mile run no problem (I mean I would be tired muscle wise, but it felt like a good tire – no hip aching/tightness/pain).

What else… oh one last big change was my neck… for random reasons, over the years my neck has gotten stiffer so I realized one day that I couldn’t comfortable liedown with my head turned to the right (vs turned to the left). A few months in, I mentioned this to Tom and her worked on my trapezius, supra-spinata, etc… and suddenly… I can turn my head to the right farther than I have in years (still needs work, but the change after 20 minutes was pretty dramatic).

Anyways… I’ve rambled enough… just some thoughts then:
1. Partner Stretching with an expert stretcher yield noticeable better results

2. Work on all muscles in the area as more than on can be “getting in the way” of the others (i.e. for hamstrings – I also stretch psoas, quads, gluts, adductors, and TFL). I’ve learned that if you feel tightness somewhere else while stretching a muscle, that is a sign to stretch that part too (to me, it is most notable when stretching adductors… sometimes the abductors and gluts get in the way).

3. Take note of your functionality in more complex movements (a tricky spin kick or something – I’m not a master martial artist) over time. I noticed that rock climbing tougher problems suddenly became easier for some reason (like with my body more functional and aligned… suddenly it was easier to push/pull my body is complex balancing positions) than before. At least that’s how it feels to me.