A couple weekends ago I had an opportunity to take the first 4-hour segment of a 16-hour course on Active Isolated Stretching (AIS) as part of the program for my massage school. If you aren’t familiar with AIS, it’s a specific stretching technique developed by Aaron Mattes that, as the name implies, serves to isolate specific muscles and stretch them for 1.5-2 seconds at a time, for multiple repetitions. The shorter holds are meant to avoid the body’s natural tendency to tense up, and to facilitate increased blood flow to the stretched muscle. The other important concept is that you’re supposed to “pull yourself into the stretch” by contracting the antagonist or opposing muscle to the one being stretched.
I had read Aaron’s book several years ago, and to be honest, didn’t really do a lot with it. I’m still not ready to drink the AIS Kool-Aid, as I think most stretching techniques can be effective when applied appropriately, but I’ve been using one of the stretches we learned in class, and another I fabricated based on AIS concepts. These are two great stretches for hockey players to help open up their hips, which should be a focus year-round.
Not yet.
We’ve been using these before our dynamic warm-up and after our training sessions with certain players. Give them a try and post your thoughts below!
To your success,
Kevin Neeld
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Curious how you assess that a player is having trouble opening his hips?
We go through a number of assessments with our elite off-season hockey guys, many of which I’ve written about in the past, but to be honest, it doesn’t take much more than watching guys move to know if they’re restricted/stiff.
I have found the above described stretching technique more effective than standard stretching but prefer CRAC (contract-relax-antagonist contract) stretching as I have found it to be more effective and comfortable. Have the athlete Contract the desired muscle to be stretched around 75-80% force for 10 seconds. Then have them Relax the muscle and immediately Contract the Antagonist and simultaneously stretch the effected muscle. Repeat 2-4 times. You will find due to reciprocal inhibition that the stretch will be less painful and lengthen the muscle even more than other techniques. Once trained, athletes can perform these stretches unassisted.
RJ-What’s the purpose of the agonist contraction?
Kevin-Firing up the agonist followed by firing up the antagonist and simultaneously stretching the agonist and you are facilitating reciprocal inhibition of the agonist. Since the muscle/athlete can no longer fight the stretch, you will get more length and less pain than if you skip that step.
nice little link…
http://neuroscience.uth.tmc.edu/s3/chapter02.html
Hey Kevin, have you noticed improved benefit from AIS Stretching compared to the other forms you utilize? Also how many reps do you perform of the 2 second stretches in general?
RJ-I’m familiar with reciprocal inhibition. I guess the novel part of what you’re recommending is to fire the agonist first. My question is why? What does that change? Can you refer me to a resource that explains why firing the agonist first, opposed to simply firing the antagonist while stretching the agonist would be a more optimal approach?
Ned-Thanks for sharing that! Always great to read through some neuroscience stuff.
Scott-Tough to say, because we use both and do so much other work that could also be responsible for improved range of motion. I like the AIS stuff though because I believe in the underlying theory, like that it’s more active, and it’s slightly more exciting than maintaining a static position for 30s. Plus, it’s different, so the athletes appreciate it. We generally go between 8-12 reps, depending on the situation. 8 is standard, but we’ll do more if we want to emphasize a particular area.
Is their a benefit of using the bands as apposed to just using your hands for the stretch?
Depending on how your built, it can be easier to maintain optimal spinal alignment using the bands, especially with this type of method when you’re getting “in and out” of the stretch repeatedly. We do a lot of traditional and band-assisted stretching with our players and I think they appreciate the change of pace with the bands.