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Pourquoi les étirements ne fonctionnent pas

De douze à vingt et un ans, j'ai été danseuse de ballet. C'était tout ce que je faisais et tout ce que je voulais faire. Étant extrêmement discipliné, je m'étirais pendant une demi-heure tous les soirs avant de me coucher afin de devenir plus souple. Et cela a fonctionné - je suis devenu sacrément flexible. Même en vacances, je m'étirais tous les soirs sans exception.

J'ai arrêté de danser à l'âge de vingt et un ans après avoir subi la deuxième de deux terribles blessures au dos. Même après avoir arrêté, j'ai continué à faire ma routine d'étirement de trente minutes tous les soirs avant de me coucher. Non seulement j'aimais le rituel, mais j'avais l'impression d'en avoir physiquement besoin, comme si j'étais accro à ce sentiment. Mon corps ne se sentait pas bien jusqu'à ce que je m'étire.

Fast-forward seven years, and I happened to come across a movement technique called Somatics while I was googling physical therapy and yoga. I ordered Thomas Hanna’s book Somatics: Reawakening the Mind’s Control of Movement, Flexibility, and Health, and after reading the first five pages I felt as though I had found something that I had been looking for my whole life. And yes, after all this time I was still doing my stretching routine every single night!

Moins d'un an plus tard, je m'étais inscrite au programme de formation professionnelle pour devenir éducatrice somatique clinique. Je me souviens m'être assis au fond du studio pendant le premier semestre de ma formation pendant que nous apprenions pourquoi les étirements étaient inefficaces et pouvaient même être nocifs. J'ai commencé à fulminer. Je m'étais étiré pendant ce qui semblait être toute ma vie et je savais de première main que c'était efficace. Je me suis bouleversé au point que j'ai eu envie de pleurer. J'avais l'impression que ma religion était attaquée. Je me suis mordu la langue et je n'ai pas parlé, mais j'ai refusé de croire ce que disait l'entraîneur.

Je suis rentré chez moi à la fin du premier semestre complètement amoureux de Somatics, comprenant et croyant tout ce que j'avais appris jusqu'à présent, sauf ce que j'avais appris sur les étirements. Je l'ai répété encore et encore dans ma tête et j'ai finalement décidé de tenter le coup : je remplacerais tous mes exercices d'étirement nocturnes par des mouvements somatiques. Mais j'essayais juste pendant une semaine ou deux, puis je voyais comment je me sentais. Je ne voulais pas perdre une partie de ma flexibilité durement gagnée, après tout.

While there are many standard Somatic exercises that Thomas Hanna created, once you learn the basic principle of how to contract and release your muscles in a certain way, you can turn pretty much any movement into what is called a pandiculation. So, on the first night I got down on the floor and set about turning all of my ritual stretches into pandiculations. While I was in pretty much the same positions as when I did my stretches, I was doing a completely different type of movement, and going through an entirely different neurophysiological process as I moved.

Après environ quarante-cinq minutes, je me suis levé du sol et… wow. Mon corps était comme de la gelée. Je ne m'étais jamais sentie aussi lâche et détendue ! C'était une sensation complètement différente de celle que j'avais ressentie après m'être étiré. J'ai continué cette routine Somatics nuit après nuit et j'ai rapidement pris conscience d'une merveilleuse nouvelle sensation d'être complètement à l'aise dans mon corps. Je n'ai pas ressenti ce sentiment constant d'oppression et de besoin de m'étirer que j'avais l'habitude de ressentir. Et même si j'avais cessé de m'étirer, je n'avais rien perdu de ma flexibilité ni de mon amplitude de mouvement.

Inutile de dire que j'étais maintenant un converti complet de Somatics. Ce changement a conduit à mon prochain défi : faire comprendre aux autres que les étirements statiques traditionnels ne sont pas tout ce qu'ils sont censés être.

Qu'est-ce que le réflexe d'étirement ?

All of us, including all vertebrate animals, have a reflex in our nervous system called the stretch reflex, or myotatic reflex. Never heard of it? Think again. Your stretch reflex has actually been tested by a doctor, though maybe not since you were a bit younger. When your doctor used that little hammer to hit just below your knee, making your foot kick up, he was testing your stretch reflex.

The stretch reflex is an automatic nervous system response to stretching within a muscle. The reflex provides automatic regulation of skeletal muscle length. When a muscle is lengthened beyond a point where it can comfortably stretch, muscle spindles (sensory receptors in the muscle) are stretched and their nerve activity increases. Neurons then immediately send a message to the muscle fibers to contract in order to protect the muscle from being torn.

Pourquoi est-ce si important que nous ayons ce réflexe ? Eh bien, les réflexes en général existent pour aider us rester en vie et éviter les blessures.

One critical function of the stretch reflex is that it prevents us from tearing our muscles. The knee-jerk reflex is a great example. The doctor hits your patellar tendon just below your knee, suddenly stretching the tendon and the quadriceps tendon, which attaches above the patella. The muscle spindles in your quadriceps muscles sense the sudden increase in length, and the message is automatically sent to contract your quadriceps in order to prevent injury and over-stretching of the muscles. When your quadriceps contract, your foot kicks up. If your foot doesn’t kick up, it could be a potential sign of a neurological disorder, such as receptor damage or peripheral nerve disease.

The stretch reflex also helps us stand up straight in our gravitational field. For example, when a person standing upright begins to lean to the right side, the postural muscles on the left side of the vertebral column will be stretched. When the muscle spindles in those muscles sense that they are being lengthened, the message to contract them is automatically sent in order to correct the person’s posture. We are rarely consciously aware of how the stretch reflex automatically maintains our balance and keeps us from falling over—but we sure would notice if it wasn’t working properly.

Pourquoi les étirements ne fonctionnent-ils pas ?

When you practice static stretching, the conscious and subconscious parts of your nervous system are battling against each other, trying to achieve opposite results. The conscious part of your brain is sending the message to manually stretch your muscles by pulling on them. But despite all your efforts, your stretch reflex is automatically kicking in, contracting your muscles to prevent you from overstretching and tearing your muscles.

Mais pourquoi avez-vous l'impression que les étirements fonctionnent ?

Donc, si notre réflexe d'étirement empêche us d'allonger manuellement nos muscles, pourquoi les étirements font-ils parfois us plus flexible? Il y a quelques raisons.

One reason is that when you engage in prolonged static stretching, pulling your muscles and tendons past the point that they are able to voluntarily lengthen, you begin to stretch your ligaments. With prolonged stretching, ligaments can be stretched, resulting in more flexible and often less stable joints. Once stretched, ligaments may never regain their original length and strength.

Second, prolonged static stretching can cause the stretch reflex to become much less active, leaving the muscles lengthened for a period of time. This is why you may feel looser after you stretch. However, the effects wear off fairly quickly. Often you will feel your muscles begin to tighten up again within just a few hours as your stretch reflex regains normal function.

For this reason, prolonged static stretching decreases muscle performance by temporarily reducing the muscle’s ability to contract. This is no good if you’re about to engage in athletic activities. A great deal of research has shown that static stretching before a workout decreases joint stability and reduces muscle performance, strength, and power. Many coaches and trainers have come to realize that the best way to warm up is to do a slow, gentle version of the movement you’ll be doing in your workout. By consciously practicing the movement sequences and increasing blood flow to your muscles and connective tissues, this type of warm up prepares both your brain and your body for optimal performance.

A third reason that stretching can make us feel more flexible is that when we stretch repeatedly, we are building up a tolerance to the sensation of pulling in our muscles. Even though it is by nature an uncomfortable sensation, with repetition it can become tolerable and even enjoyable. I used to love that feeling of pulling in my muscles, and I craved it every day. It provided me with a temporary lengthening and release of my muscles, and as I became more comfortable with the feeling, I was able to pull my muscles even farther. But of course the reason that I craved that feeling every day is that the fix was only temporary. Less than twenty-four hours after stretching, my muscles had tightened right back up again.

S'étirer pour soulager la douleur chronique : Pourquoi ça ne marche pas

Pratiquement tous ceux que je rencontre qui ont essayé de s'étirer pour soulager leur douleur chronique rapportent que cela ne les a pas aidés du tout, et il y a deux raisons simples à cela.

First, stretching does not reeducate the nervous system. No amount of pulling on the muscles will change the resting level of muscle tension that is being set by the gamma feedback loop. The resting level of muscle tension must be reset through an active process of relearning involving slow, conscious, voluntary movement and the integration of sensory feedback from the muscle.

Second, when you pull on an already tight muscle the stretch reflex is activated, making the muscle contract even more. It is possible that you might get some pain relief from gentle prolonged stretching, but as we’ve already discussed, the increased muscle length is temporary and the muscle will rebound within a short period of time. Most likely, stretching will not only do little for your pain, but will increase and prolong your pain by making your muscles tighter.

Apprentissage Somatiques Cliniques exercices : L'alternative la plus efficace aux étirements

Thomas Hanna, le fondateur de Formation Somatique Clinique, a étudié la neurophysiologie et exploré des techniques de mouvement qui s'attaqueraient directement à la tension musculaire habituelle qui était la cause sous-jacente de la douleur chronique et des problèmes de posture et de mouvement de ses clients. Hanna a développé des mouvements pratiques et des exercices d'auto-soins qui utilisaient la réponse pandiculaire.

Pandiculation sends biofeedback to the brain regarding the level of contraction in our muscles, thereby helping to prevent the buildup of chronic muscular tension. This is an extremely important function of the pandicular response. A pandiculation contracts and releases muscles in such a way that the alpha-gamma feedback loop is naturally reset. This resetting reduces muscular tension and restores the muscles’ ability to lengthen.

You can learn Clinical Somatics pandiculation exercises at home with our easy-to-follow online courses.

Somatiques Cliniques Les pandiculations ne sont pas seulement la meilleure alternative aux étirements, mais elles vous permettent également de prévenir, soulager et récupérer de nombreuses affections courantes telles que les douleurs musculaires et articulaires chroniques, les problèmes de disque, la sciatique, la scoliose, la posture arrondie, la fasciite plantaire, les troubles de l'articulation temporo-mandibulaire. , et plus.

Click here to start learning Clinical Somatics exercises today!