Length Tension Relationships

Have you ever seen people, maybe the big guys on the beach, that walk around that look like they have a problem maintaining posture? We’re talking about the muscle heads on the beach that are unable to unbend their arms…almost as if they’re walking around ‘pumped’ all the time.

Believe it or not, this is a very real situation for many Americans, not just muscle-heads.

In fact, they have a term to describe this altered state known as Altered Length Tension Relationships.

The National Academy of Sport and Medicine describes Length Tension Relationships as the length at which a muscle can produce the greatest force. The downside is that if your muscles, much like your joints, are misaligned, you are then not able to contract and lengthen your muscles quite as easily. This leads to many muscular imbalances henceforth.

 

Here are a few great tips to help you maintain good length tension relationships:

1) Stretch properly before and after your exercise routine. Doing so will help with elongating your muscle fibers back to their normal lengths. This will also allow more room for blood to circulate.

2) Work all your muscles evenly. Remember, performing bench presses without training accompanying muscles such as your rotator cuff, deltoids, triceps, etc can leave certain muscles weaker.

3) Do your cardio! We all know many of the benefits of cardiovascular training, but this just adds one more to the list. Proper circulation along with lactic acid removal and muscular stimulation, the benefits of this style of respiratory training will also help with the muscles’ length tension relationships.