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Old 06-07-2007, 01:26 PM
EricT EricT is offline
Rank: Heavyweight
 
Join Date: Jul 2005
Posts: 6,314
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On the contrary...when I say adequate I mean adequate to suit the needs of the individual athlete and his sport. I don't think you want to turn into a contortionist but you're gonna have differnet needs than just someone into lifting. But you gotta maintain strength at whatever new range of motion you liberate or it would be worthless. But really what I am talking about as far as range of motion is not a well stretched muscle or a tuned down nervous response I'm talking about the range of motion of individual joints. Stretching them beyond their individual limits will be worse than not being flexible enough. I'm not trying to tell anyone how flexible they need to be I'm just talking some commone sense. Anyone wanting to do MMA who thinks they need to turn into a yoga master should think again.

Your joints have a limited stretchability and natural range of motion regardless of how much elasticity you achieve in a muscle. Look at vertical reach and you shoulders. A normal person with good flexibility can basically reach straight up overhead so call it 180 degrees. You take the same person and as him to raise his arms up in front of him until they are overhead and he's most likely gonna get somewhere between 140 and 180 degrees. Which is fine for him. If he's an MMA'st he probably needs to be able to get up to 180 with full strengh (I'm talking active flexibility here). But should he try to go beyond that in the name of flexibility? Hell no. Because if he pushes it any further he's pushing the limits of the joint and what he's going to get is joint laxity and shoulder problems. So when I say adequate I mean there is certainly a range but I don't care what the sport the joints have certain average limits.
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If you act sanctimonious I will just list out your logical fallacies until you get pissed off and spew blasphemous remarks.
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