What happens if you try to stretch a rubber band too much and too quickly?
If you’ve ever tried this, you know: it either snaps back at you or it breaks.
In the body, this phenomenon is called the stretch reflex.
If you try to stretch muscles too quickly or past their limits, they will either seize up, quickly snap back to how they were, or you’ll pull something.
On the other hand, if you slowly and gently stretch a rubber band, by wrapping it around just a little more, then over time you’ll find that the rubber band will more than double the capacity of what it can hold.
With mild tension, over time, the rubber band loses its stiffness and becomes more pliable and adaptable.
The same is true in the body. If you want to create space in your joints and increase your flexibility, you need to apply a strategy of incremental increases in tension over time.
Time is an ally in this process. Working with it, we can expand the capacity for what our muscles and joints can hold.
As goes the body, so too the mind. When we try to “push out of your comfort zone” too quickly, we burnout or we soon revert back to our old ways.
Sustainable growth requires small movements over time.
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