Muscle Fascia Stretching

You what?

Yeah, that’s what I said when I heard about it. To make a complex story simple, apparently, our muscle fibres are coated with a protective sheath known as the muscle fascia – and many believe it’s very reluctant to let the muscle fibres within grow, which is why muscle gains come so slowly.

One theory – yes, like so much of bodybuilding, it’s only a theory – is that, if you can find a way to stretch the muscle fascia, you can, in effect, allow your actual muscle fibres within the space they need to grow, thus accelerating growth.

Much of the evidence for this theory exists based on some of the best bodybuilders, who all practiced what many now believe was muscle fascia stretching to achieve amazing body parts, Tom Platz and his giant quads. Arnold and his chest. Etc. But also plenty of other people who aren’t known accredit the idea of muscle fascia stretching for allowing their own great gains.

So, how do you do this?

Well, you need to do it at the time when your muscles are at their biggest, which is when they are pumped up. I mean so pumped up that they feel like they are about to explode.

Then you’ve got a few options. You can either stretch your muscles out as far as you can for as long as possible, or flex for as hard as you can for as long as possible, until you can no longer stand the pain. And, pain there will be – but good pain.

In theory, what you are doing is, taking advantage of the fact you arms are already pumped up like crazy, thus stretching the fascia, and then taking it even further by applying a sustained pressure – by either stretching or contracting for a sustained period of time – thus giving the stubborn muscle fascia no option but to stretch a little.

To oversimplify things, I suppose its like a balloon. Blow it up just once and let it down, and it regains its original form. Keep it inflated for months and deflate it, and its deflated form will have expanded in size.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 at 3:36 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.