How does stretching your muscles work exactly?
In: Biology
You are literally stretching them. Your muscles are attached to your bones, and certain positions and movements force the muscle to elongate, thus stretching it.
The pleasurable sensation that comes from stretching is transmitted through special receptors in your muscles.
Imagine two back-to-back letter E’s. There are protein complexes shaped kinda like that where the horizontal lines sticking out are zigzags of molecules that overlap with the next back-to-back E shaped complex. When they pull toward each other to overlap more, that’s a muscle contracting. When they move apart, it’s stretching the muscle.
Imagine a bunch of people standing in a line holding hands with their arms stretched out in a T pose. If they all pull their arms in at once, they’d shrink the line significantly, and the opposite would make the line longer. This is how the muscle stretches/contracts 🙂
When you stretch a muscle, it activates something called a golgi tendon reflex that forces your muscles to relax so you don’t stretch too far and hurt yourself.
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