Clinical application of muscle stretching: a brief review

Abstract

Stretching exercises are usually recommended within physical training programs. In the last few years, studies have focused on the relationship between hypomobility and hypermobility with the incidence of injuries and different diseases.The possible effect of muscle stretching on the cardiovascular system has been also investigated. Therefore, the aim of this brief review was to analyze studies investigating potential clinical application of muscle stretching. The articles were obtained from the following databases: National Library of Medicine (MEDLINE) (1966-2011), EMBASE (1974-2011), Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (Cochrane Reviews) (1993-2011), Literatura Latino-Americana e do Caribe em Ciências da Saúde(LILACS) (1982-2011), Physiotherapy Evidence Database (PEDro) and Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO) (1997-2011), originally published in English and Portuguese, with no date limits. Combinations of keywords and their synonyms in English or Portuguese were used in each database. It was found that both hypomobility and hypermobility are associated with health problems. It is therefore important to assess such conditions in the context of physical and functional evaluations. In the first case muscle stretching should be avoided, whereas in the second they should be prioritized. Recently, some studies have shown that muscle stretching can induce moderate to high increases in cardiovascular responses, particularly heart rate, systolic and diastolic blood pressures, rate pressure product, and heart rate variability. Additional research on this field is needed, since such responses may compromise exercise safety in some cases, but also be related to beneficial long term adaptations.