Osgood Schlatters Disease And Ways To Prevent Your Child Getting It

Before and after sports stretching is recommended for both children and adults. Its not just muscles that need their flexibility maintained by stretching but other soft tissues. These include passive tissues around your joints namely ligaments and capsules.

These tissues have varying degrees of elasticity and respond to different types of loading. Lets look at the types of tensions.

Neural tension can be felt usually with a combined elongation of both spinal cord and limb. The angle the limb moves at and distal joints determines which nerves are targeted. The spine usually needs to be in full flex including the neck. It can be with the upper limb, the neck needs to be in side flexion and away from the arm.

Adverse neural tension has been linked to repetitive strain injury in those working on keyboard and other repetitive small range tasks. It is also closely linked with sciatica and lower back pain. Furthermore it is linked with that tingling you get when you reach maximally with your arm or towards your toes. This is sometimes mistaken for a hamstring stretch feeling.

Effective mobilization of these nerves is not done with a full end of range stretch that we are familiar with, but rather a sliding movement, back and forwards, which aims to release any tethering that has built up from scar tissue and such like. It should be done very gently because nerves do not like too much tension and for 30 seconds. Repeat thrice only once per day.

Joints ought to be stretched as well. They may have got tight due to injury or seldom useage. In this case it will be the passive tissues such as specific ligaments or the capsule that may be tight.

Once again specific ligaments will need to be stressed in that particular direction and held gently for 30 sec. Repeat 3 times. It takes longer with these tissues because of the greater content of connective tissue fibers which are inelastic.

By this we mean stretching the medial collateral ligament of the knee would require a valgus stress with the knee in either full flexion or full extension.

Capsules can be stretched in the open packed position. Every joint has a unique position where the two surfaces are the furthest apart. For example the shoulder open packed position is full lateral rotation, abduction and slight extension.

Remember that stretching the capsule is also taking it to the point where it is most unstable. This is the possible dislocation position. Take great care with these stretches. Do remember that stretching should only be done if there is a lack of flexibility or for gentle maintenance.

Always be very careful as nerves are the most sensitive structures in our bodies. Any increase in pain or tingling does mean you have over-stretched. And this may not be felt until the next day due to the latency effect of nerves.

Stretching is great for most bodies, but please consult a doctor if you have any underlying medical conditions or concerns.