What makes muscles inflexible

Your nervous system is acting beyond your conscious level of control. So your sensation is real, it is just not an indication of something happening at the level of the muscle tissue. In the case of tightness experienced after being in a position for a long time as in the airplane example , the sensation of stiffness is likely a signal from the nervous system to tell you to move.

Usually in these cases getting up and walking around or moving or changing positions will alleviate the sensation. In the case of both the inflexible person and the flexible person, neither actually have short or contracted muscles. They may both feel a sensation of tightness at their end range of motion. This is a nervous system response to the stretch likely designed to protect you from injury. Your nervous system has a very large degree of control over your range of motion.

Those who sit in a chair the whole day are less flexible than those who have more active jobs. Our body gives us as much range of motion as we need to perform our daily tasks.

If your daily tasks involve being a chair and couch warrior, don't expect ho have open hips and hamstrings.

If you go to Asia, you'll see tons of people, young and old, in the street squatting in Malasana — a deep yogi squat — a posture hardly accessible to the majority of the US population nowadays. That's because we have short hamstrings, tight groin and low back from spending most of our lives at a desk. Trying to increase your flexibility? We often pin the blame on our short and tight muscles when we're struggling with certain yoga poses.

But the truth is that the lack of flexibility can also stem from muscle weakness rather than their "shortness". Your brain controls everything that's happening with your body. So it gives you as much range of motion as you can handle to prevent tissue damage and injury. When your muscles are not strong enough to stabilize and protect the joint you're trying to stretch, your brain will automatically stiffen that area for your own good. As we age, our bodily functions naturally slow down.

Our joints, muscles, and bones start to deteriorate. We are born extremely flexible as kids, strike the perfect balance between mobility and stability at the age of After that, maintaining mobility becomes an uphill battle. Unless you were a contortionist star in your youth and maintained the mobility throughout the years, you can't expect to be as flexible in your 30s as yogis in their 20s.

Our sex can also define how flexible we get. Women are known to be bendier because of bone structure and hormone differences. Besides, since childhood, women more often than men focus on activities that help develop body suppleness such as dancing, gymnastics, Pilates, etc. It's not all about the muscles and joints. The way you're naturally built can affect your range of motion.

For example, people with long femur bones long legs , generally, can squat deeper than those with short femurs as their body has to go through a greater range of motion to get into the same position.

While it can be an advantage in a yoga class, it certainly isn't in a weightlifting world. People with short femurs can naturally squat with better form and with heavier weight. It can result from a mixture of different factors. But if we're talking genetics specifically, there's a particular gene variation that makes your connective tissues stiffer , thus decreasing the possible range of motion.

Well, not exactly, but you get the picture. Whichever stretch you decide to do exhale with each only holding the stretch for two seconds. Better sleep is only one of the advantages. Gentle stretching movements combined with proper breathing can invigorate the respiratory and neuromuscular systems, which can calm the central nervous system.

Your mood will be uplifted, your ability to make logical decisions and your capacity to think and learn will increase because of the additional amount of oxygen in the blood flowing to your brain.