Stretching muscle fascia = more muscle size/growth

[B.E.N.]

I have been looking for answers to this for a while. No one can seem to know (or maybe they do not care) but I am curious about this. Muscle are surrounded by a fascia of three layers that culminate in the tendons in the muscle.

I have been discussing with physical therapy students that if you stretch the muscle fascia you are actually giving the muscle more room to expand or grow. We have all likely seen the recent study/report indicating that stretching is not what is was thought to be

Again...I was a finance student...so don't jump all over me if this is totally ignorant.


This is one article I have found...feel free to chime in with your thoughts.

When you think about gaining muscle, stretching is probably not the first thing that pops into your head. But did you know that stretching plays a critical role in building muscle?

Every muscle in your body is enclosed in a bag of tough connective tissue known as fascia. Fascia is important for holding your muscles in their proper place in your body. But your fascia may also be holding back your muscle growth. Think for a moment about your muscles. You train them and feed them properly. They want to grow and will grow but something is holding them back. They have no room to grow!

Because fascia is so tough, it doesn't allow the muscle room to expand. It is like stuffing a large pillow into a small pillowcase. The size of the muscle won't change regardless of how hard you train or how well you eat because the connective tissue around your muscles is constricting the muscles within.

The best example of this is the calf muscle. The lower leg is riddled with fascia because of its tremendous weight-bearing duties in the body. It is because of this fascia that many trainers have great difficulty developing their calves.

The solution: stretching.

Using the pillowcase example from above, imagine you can expand the size of the pillowcase by stretching it. Suddenly, the pillow within has more room and will expand to fill that new space. By stretching your muscles under specific conditions, you can actually stretch your fascia and give your muscles more room to grow.

The key to effective fascial stretching is the pump. The best time to stretch to expand the bags that are holding in your muscles is when your muscles are pumped up full of blood.

When your muscles are fully pumped up, they are pressing against the fascia. By stretching hard at that time, you increase that pressure on the fascia greatly, which can lead to expansion of the fascia.

One of the major reasons Arnold Schwarzenegger had such incredible chest development was that he finished his chest workouts with dumbell flyes, an exercise that emphasizes the stretched position of the pectoral muscles. He would pump his chest up full of blood during the workout then do flyes, holding the stretch at the bottom of the flye. This gave his chest room to grow to amazing proportions.

Fascial stretching is more rigorous than regular stretching but the results can be amazing. When you stretch hard enough to cause the fascia to expand, you will really feel it! When you are stretching the fascia, you should feel a powerful pulling sensation and pressure as the muscle works against the fascia to expand it.

Be sure you do not stretch so hard that you cause the muscle to tear or cause injury to yourself. You will rapidly learn to distinguish the difference between good stretching and a bad stretching. You should not feel any sharp pain, just a steady pull.

Hold each stretch for at least 20 to 30 seconds as you must give your fascia time to be affected by the stretch. Stretch hard like this only when you have a fully pumped muscle as you must give your fascia a reason to expand. If your muscles aren't pumped, just stretch normally.

One set of hard stretching after each set you do for a muscle group, besides the obvious benefits of increased flexibility, can have an incredible effect on the size of your muscles and their further ability to grow.

[Fordfan01]

synthrol can be used to stretch the fascia but only needs to be used by ppl who have done extensive research i think perfectbeast has a log on this

[B.E.N.]

synthrol can be used to stretch the fascia but only needs to be used by ppl who have done extensive research i think perfectbeast has a log on this

Not referring to Site Enhancement Oils at all. Only talking about actually stretching the fascia without any outside help.

[MuscleScience]

The fascia is intimately attached to the muscle it surrounds. At the ends of the muscles the fascia will blend into the tendons of that muscle. Stretching to increase muscle size by expanding the fascia does not seem to elicit any type of extra hypertrophy. That said there is also little data in the literature that says that it doesnt with complete certanty. The two camps in the exercise phys world for and against the argument both have valid arguments either way. The whole stretching debate has really took on a life of its own in the past few years. Ever since there were a couple of papers that showed no increased benefit in ROM, and injury prevention due to stretching. IMO, as long as you don't injure the tendons or cause tearing of the fascia to were it will start to scar up then It cant hurt.

Just my two cents.

[Ronnie Rowland]

Site enhancement oils are the only thing that will make a noticeable difference. That much I can guarantee! Just about every top pro uses these oils for a reason.

Getting a nice pump and including isolation exercises can help a little bit. Creatine (a cell volumizer) and aromatizing steroids like test (a cell volumizer) can also help a little.

The "extreme stretching" concept seemed to get popular after the release of Manfred Hoeberl's book called "10 Minutes to MASSIVE ARMS. In this book he made claims that 30 minutes of daily stretching would give one arm size they never dreamed possible. Later, I read several articles were he was actually using a site enhancement oil called" Escilene" to pump up his arm to such monsterous porportions. Did that surprise me? Abolutely not! I already knew stretching did not work well nor does doing repetitions with a super slow negative. The placeco effect is so over-rated it's not even funny!


Stretching to increase muscle size is an unproven theory and a waste of time IMO unless it's being done during the performance of an actual repetition with weight. And even that is no comparison to site enahancing oils and will invite injury if taken to extremes. Flat flyes are a good example here!

Extreme stretching has been known to damage the anterior capsule of the shoulder because the shoulder wasn’t designed to stay in that position for long periods of time. I am of the opinion that extreme stretching and other theories such as lifting weights on stability devices (inflated exercise balls), offers no advantages, and will invite injury.

Ones flexibility is determined by Genetics!

In final, keep it simple and stick to things that are proven to work as opposed to chasing after some theory in fantasy land.

[B.E.N.]

Site enhancement oils are the only thing that will make a noticeable difference. That much I can guarantee! Just about every top pro uses these oils for a reason.

Getting a nice pump and including isolation exercises can help a little bit. Creatine (a cell volumizer) and aromatizing steroids like test (a cell volumizer) can also help a little.

The "extreme stretching" concept seemed to get popular after the release of Manfred Hoeberl's book called "10 Minutes to MASSIVE ARMS. In this book he made claims that 30 minutes of daily stretching would give one arm size they never dreamed possible. Later, I read several articles were he was actually using a site enhancement oil called" Escilene" to pump up his arm to such monsterous porportions. Did that surprise me? Abolutely not! I already knew stretching did not work well nor does doing repetitions with a super slow negative. The placeco effect is so over-rated it's not even funny!


Stretching to increase muscle size is an unproven theory and a waste of time IMO unless it's being done during the performance of an actual repetition with weight. And even that is no comparison to site enahancing oils and will invite injury if taken to extremes. Flat flyes are a good example here!

Extreme stretching has been known to damage the anterior capsule of the shoulder because the shoulder wasn’t designed to stay in that position for long periods of time. I am of the opinion that extreme stretching and other theories such as lifting weights on stability devices (inflated exercise balls), offers no advantages, and will invite injury.

Ones flexibility is determined by Genetics!

In final, keep it simple and stick to things that are proven to work as opposed to chasing after some theory in fantasy land.

Alrighty then...that would be a NO on deep stretching.

[Consistency]

i love doing myofascial release stretching with a foam roll or having someone doing it to me with a bar. I think it works and atleast it feels good

[Tenmoney]

While I do agree that stretching won't help the muscle grow, at least it hasn't for me, I am going to play devil's advocate on a couple of other things. I have coached gymnastics and cheerleading for over 10 years and I can say beyond any doubt that, 1. stretching can and does prevent injury. Not in the sense that it will keep you from pulling a pec if you're doing neg's w/ 500 on bench, but in exercises and activities where the muscles and tendons are being stretched. Maybe not so much weightlifting, but other sports. 2. I have seen first hand, both in myself and the kids I've coached, that while genetics plays a roll in flexibility it isn't the determining factor. I will say that it has a huge part in one's starting point of flexibility, but with hard work, as w/ anything, it is possible to become a great deal more flexible than you are today. I went from not even close to splits to looking like Van Dam in Bloodsport. It took me about 6-8 months, but I got there. It wasn't just legs either. My back was about as flexible as a 2x4 when I started. Now I can do bridges with the best of them. (think bending over and touching the ground, but bending backwards)

While I'm on a roll, lol, I should point out that, in my experience, it's best to stretch for injury prevention after a brief warmup of the muscles being stretched. (stretching before a warmup does absolutely crap) and stretching for flexibility should be done at the end of your activity, cause then your muscles are completely loose and stretch further, there by increasing flexibility to a greater degree.

[Ronnie Rowland]

While I do agree that stretching won't help the muscle grow, at least it hasn't for me, I am going to play devil's advocate on a couple of other things. I have coached gymnastics and cheerleading for over 10 years and I can say beyond any doubt that, 1. stretching can and does prevent injury. Not in the sense that it will keep you from pulling a pec if you're doing neg's w/ 500 on bench, but in exercises and activities where the muscles and tendons are being stretched. Maybe not so much weightlifting, but other sports. 2. I have seen first hand, both in myself and the kids I've coached, that while genetics plays a roll in flexibility it isn't the determining factor. I will say that it has a huge part in one's starting point of flexibility, but with hard work, as w/ anything, it is possible to become a great deal more flexible than you are today. I went from not even close to splits to looking like Van Dam in Bloodsport. It took me about 6-8 months, but I got there. It wasn't just legs either. My back was about as flexible as a 2x4 when I started. Now I can do bridges with the best of them. (think bending over and touching the ground, but bending backwards)

While I'm on a roll, lol, I should point out that, in my experience, it's best to stretch for injury prevention after a brief warmup of the muscles being stretched. (stretching before a warmup does absolutely crap) and stretching for flexibility should be done at the end of your activity, cause then your muscles are completely loose and stretch further, there by increasing flexibility to a greater degree.

I agree with what you say..Very good post!!!

Also, I did not mean you cannot become more flexible, only that flexibility is determined by ones genetics.

[Tenmoney]

Thanks, and yes from what I've seen you're right. The extent to which you can become flexible is predetermined by your genetics. Otherwise, every kid I've ever coached would've become a human contortionist. lol

[IronReload04]

anybody who is in physical therapy has taken anatomy.......any one who has taken anatomy has an understanding of how tightly the fascia forms comparmentalization of the muscles, esp limbs.........it follows that stretching this tight layer would indeed make room for new cells and larger cells.




i do not train doggcrapp......but i believe in everything its creator stands for.......one thing he stands for is extreme stretching, weighted stretches....there is plenty of anactotal evidence......we over at intensemuscle.com show time and time again, that our appearance radically changes when extreme stretching is introduced....it is all logical

[IronReload04]

anybody who is in physical therapy has taken anatomy.......any one who has taken anatomy has an understanding of how tightly the fascia forms comparmentalization of the muscles, esp limbs.........it follows that stretching this tight layer would indeed make room for new cells and larger cells.




i do not train doggcrapp......but i believe in everything its creator stands for.......one thing he stands for is extreme stretching, weighted stretches....there is plenty of anactotal evidence......we over at intensemuscle.com show time and time again, that our appearance radically changes when extreme stretching is introduced....it is all logical

[Ronnie Rowland]

anybody who is in physical therapy has taken anatomy.......any one who has taken anatomy has an understanding of how tightly the fascia forms comparmentalization of the muscles, esp limbs.........it follows that stretching this tight layer would indeed make room for new cells and larger cells.




i do not train doggcrapp......but i believe in everything its creator stands for.......one thing he stands for is extreme stretching, weighted stretches....there is plenty of anactotal evidence......we over at intensemuscle.com show time and time again, that our appearance radically changes when extreme stretching is introduced....it is all logical

IronReload I took anatomy in college and I fully understand where you are coming from. Heres the problem with extreme stretching-it can cause severe injury to the rotator cuff. Trust me when I tell you that active stretching of fascia will take place during warm-up and work sets and going beyond that point invites injury.

Don't believe everything you read on the internet! At the present, I'm helping 3 guys rehab a rotator cuff injury that was caused by yours truly- "Extreme Stretching"! I can get them over here as a testimony if needed to make my case that severely stretching the fascia can promote serious problems. These men are still unable to train chest or shoulders like they did before utilizing extreme stretching.

I've experiemented with Extreme Streching and felt it was a waste time. My advise to you is spend that extra time and energy pumping up the muscles with actual weight training. It's safer and a whole lot more effective!!!

[Tenmoney]

I agree w/ Guru, as I too have injured my rotator cuff w/ extreme stretches. I'm sure there are some pro's to extreme stretching, but the risks far out weight the benefits. I'm am curious though... Iron, when you say that you have radically changed your body... What changes have you made, and what is your definition of radical?

[unreal_size]

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