[ELI5] Why does stretching feel so good?
In: Biology
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Stretching feels good because it helps our muscles relax and become less tight. Imagine your muscles are like rubber bands. When we stretch them gently, it’s like giving them a little massage, making them feel happy and loose. Plus, stretching can also help us move better and stay healthy! YAY!
When you are not moving for a while, your body relaxes and try to heal, you are healing all the time. But that healing, sometimes, makes your muscles a little bit not so wide. When you stretch after being sleep or sit down for a while, your muscles and tendons became a little longer for a little time, and you “break” some of that “wrong” healing, and that’s just a little but painful. But later, your body will heal properly so you will feel better.
People that do not exercise or stay too much time still can feel great pain when they stretch, because their muscles and tendons are not so wide anymore and stretching makes them longer, and that hurts more if your muscles are not that strong. But they too can recover with training.
That’s why we should do some exercise everyday and stretch when we wake up: to have a strong body that does not hurt after relaxing for a while.
How can any post here be nsfw?
Seems to miss the point
so when you use muscles, you generally contract them – called an endergonic reaction. it requires energy to do that, made by the cells directly. that energy is called adenosine triphosphate, or ATP. some of it sits in your muscles, like, dormant, waiting to be used for contraction and use. So, if you stretch your muscles, you relax them and *release* that ATP, because youre doing the opposite of contracting them. So ATP goes out into your body and literally gives you energy that was sitting there.
when you have sore muscles from working too much, its because your body couldn’t keep up with the actvitiy, and could not make ATP fast enough, therefore not getting enough oxygen. If you dont have enough oxygen in your muscles, your body switches to *aneorobic* as opposed to aerobic (“aer” meaning air or oxygen).
when it switches to anaerobic, it mixes ATP with an enzyme called pyruvate, which creates lactic acid. Lactic acid is used as energy instead. But its not the body’s favorite, and it creates soreness. Thats why stretching after a tough workout, helps with soreness, because you are releasing the lactic acid from your muscles
thats why stretching after working out helps reduce soreness, because youre literally pushing out the lactic acid. The way you push out ATP when you stretch in the morning or after a nap.
TLDR: you’re pushing out stored energy across your muscles.
Why is this marked NSFW.. unless you’re talking about a certain kind of stretching….
But in the non NSFW sense: why it “feels” nice to stretch is because it’s releasing tension that otherwise can’t be released by simply just relaxing the muscles and tendons completely.
Muscle and tendons can tense up and become super tight to the point where it’s painful (usually called a muscle knot) and without going into the biochemistry of it all, our brains think that tension is basically the same thing as inflammation (and sometimes it is)
when something is swollen and/or inflamed it hurts, when that swelling goes down or that inflammation goes down we feel good.
Same thing with stretching. Stretching gets rid of that tension hence our brain likes it
When you stretch, it increases blood flow to your muscles, which helps them relax and feel less tense. Also, stretching triggers the release of endorphins, those feel-good chemicals in your brain, making you feel more relaxed and happy. Plus, it can improve your flexibility and range of motion, making everyday movements easier and less uncomfortable.
What I wanna know is why I always get the urge to scream while my body shakes violently at peak stretch
Everyone is mentioning the feel good chemicals that come after the stretching itself. The chemicals come because your body is rewarding you for doing something that is good for it.
Why is it good for it you ask?
What do you in bed after you’ve woken up (easy there creepers), you stretch, which wakes up the muscles and sends fluids into them to get them ready to work as they have been dormant for a decent time.
Stretching during, or after a big day is the same, certain muscles get neglected or overused during the day and don’t go through their full range of motion.
When you stretch, you wake those dormant muscles up and relieve the opposing muscles that are fatigued (when you flex the bicep, the tricep must relax as an example).
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