serinde | (no subject)

Ucky hot, and it's definitely a lot more humid than 55%, sorry Weather Underground. However, I was working with David, who is on the same page as me with respect to taking it somewhat easy during the nasty weather, so I am neither dehydrated nor brain-cooked. Yay. Did pretty well, generally, although I had a mildly frustrating bit of doing a throw that I know I've done before but it just wasn't clicking. Finally achieved competency towards the end, so that was okay. My leg's still hurting on a few flavors of ukemi, which is not so okay. I'm beginning to wonder if I'm going to be stuck with this for all time. (Though someone said in the locker room that in her experience, injuries like that do take many months to clear up completely. "Live and find out", clearly.)

An oddity: sitting in seiza is very comfortable before class starts (at which point I've usually done some warm-up stretches), and comfortable from about 1/3 of the way through class and onward; but it's rather painful when we pause after the first technique we've been working on. I'm not concerned or anything, just sort of mildly WTF?.

Threaded | Flat

Wow, I can answer that for you! :) We just learned that in neurology.

Basically, there are two reflexes that govern muscle tightening/loosening: "muscle spindle reflex" and "Golgi Tendon Organ reflex". The former (also called "stretch reaction reflex") kicks in right away when you start exercising, and keeps the muscles contracted (taut) so your joints stay firm and it's harder for you to twist or sprain (overstretch) them.

A little later, when your muscles have been working for a while, the GTO reflex kicks in, -loosening- your muscles to help prevent spasm and improve blood circulation. So I'll bet that period of discomfort is just the space between the two.

We're being taught in Sports Massage class that stretching -before- an event can actually make injury -likelier-, because your muscle spindles are "calibrated" to the muscles' usual length and pre-event stretching lengthens them. It throws your anti-sprain reflexes off, basically. We learn warm-up Range-of-motion exercises to get the joint fluids flowing, instead of pre-event stretches.

I don't know if any of this will help you, but hey, it's an answer. :)