Athletes Guide To Improving Muscle Pliability

January 10, 2023 by Velocity Sports Performance

In the quest to improve movement quality & efficiency, as well as reduce the risk of injury, pliability has become a popular topic.

This guide will help you with ways to improve muscle pliability.

What Is Pliability?

Pliability describes the quality of muscle tissue. Function focuses on effective/efficient movement. It’s not just about how much muscle, how much range of motion, or how much force.

Pliability is an underlying tissue quality that improves those things.

Sports medicine and tissue professionals use the term to describe muscle tissue. Three components that they incorporate into the concept of pliability include;

Elasticity – has spring after yielding and while absorbing force
Smooth – layers of tissue glide freely, without adhesions
Supple – muscle may be dense but it is adaptable and unrestricted

Those are great descriptions of the qualities we want in the muscle of any active person or athlete. So improving muscle pliability is a worthwhile goal.

“Men are born soft and supple; dead they are stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and pliant; dead, they are brittle and dry. Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death. Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life. The hard and stiff will be broken. The soft and supple will prevail.” — Lao Tzu

Is Muscle Pliability the Same as Flexibility?

No. Muscle pliability is not the same as flexibility.

Flexibility is the ability of joints and tissues to move through a full range of motion. Its just a quantitative measure of passive motion.

Pliability, on the other hand, involves the tissue’s ability to move, and the quality it moves with.

You might be able to move through a specific range of motion, but you can still lack pliability. Without pliability, that motion could come unevenly, with added stress, or lack of elasticity to spring back well.

So how far you can move and stretch a muscle, doesn’t entirely reflect if it is pliable.

Why Is Improving Muscle Pliability Important?

Movement and muscle contraction transmit forces through connected chains into the tissue of your body.

These forces can be dissipated effectively across tissues and joints or overload them.

The forces can be used elastically like a new rubber band, or damage tissue like ones that are ragged and worn out.

The question of whether you can use that force effectively is answered by whether your muscles are adequately pliable.

The most important ability for an athlete is availability. Injuries are the greatest setback for anyone who wants to be fit, active, and do the things they love.

Pliability is key to your body remaining resilient when you go out and push it hard playing, training, and living.

Is Pliability Only a Muscle Quality?

No. In humans, you can’t anatomically or functionally separate the muscle from connective tissue completely.

Muscle is surrounded by layers of fascia and connects to bones through tendons. Fascia also is a tensional network transmitting forces through the body (Schleip ed. 2012). It’s interwoven with-in your muscles like a web helping to give it structure and affecting its elasticity.

So while people commonly refer to “muscle” pliability, in fact, its “tissue” pliability that includes muscles, tendons, and fascia.

Is Muscle Pliability Based on Science?

Muscle pliability is more than just a term used by professionals, its a valid physiological construct (Science Direct) although there can be some confusion in popular media. The elements making up pliability are measurable and based in science.

First of all, the elasticity (Uffmann 2004) and compliance (Simons 1998 ) of myofascial tissue can be measured.

Secondly, muscle tone (Gubler-Hanna 2007) and stiffness (Prune 2016) can be measured in several different ways.

Furthermore, MSK ultrasound imaging visually shows how much fascial layers are sliding and it can be measured (Soares 2021).

So, pliability is not be universally defined or used appropriately in some social media posts. However, these are real, measurable qualities of muscle, tendinous, and fascial tissue.

How Do You Improve Muscle Pliability?

Pliability is key for movement, and it has scientifically measurable qualities. Therefore, improving muscle pliability is important. So, what can you do to make it better?

Move

Movement is key to tissue pliability. “Motion is lotion” is a saying that emphasizes a scientific fact.

The contraction, relaxation, and stretching/sliding of muscles, tendons and fascia does in fact lubricate the joints and tissues. Forceful contractions positively influence the hydration and chemical composition of muscles.

Lack of movement causes both functional (Campbell 2019 ) and physiological (Williams 1984) changes to tissues. Furthermore, pliability gets worse when you don’t move enough (Cowman 2015).

Moving through a full range of motion helps prevent adhesions from developing in the fascia. Additionally, it helps to prevent the densification of tissues.

Here are few things to consider to move well;

Train with full motion: Training in multiple planes of motion (up/down, side/side, rotate, front/back) is a great step. Too many athletes start using the same motions again and again. That is to say, it’s also important to work through a full joint range of motion.
Different speeds of movement: Grinding out slow heavy lifts or steady hikes are great. However, sometimes you need to be moving faster, and bouncier. Muscles need to move in different ways to stay pliable.
Active mobility work: Mobility (both flexibility and stability) needs to be trained with specific intention, not just left to chance.

Hands-on Tissue Work

If you want to improve muscle pliability you can take a page from elite athletes and teams and focus on professional tissue work.

IASTM muscle recovery — *“Tooling” is one of several Instrument Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization techniques used for improving muscle pliability.*

We aren’t talking about a relaxing Swedish massage (although they can be great!)

The changes in tissue compliance and elasticity before and after tissue work (Jędrzejewski 2020, Costello 2016) are measurable.

Trained therapists use the skill of their hands along with specialized tools to get the results you need. These approaches can be highly targeted to specific tissues, structures, and myofascial chains.

Tissue work targets both physiological structures and nervous system function.

In short, for improving muscle pliability, skilled hands-on tissue work is the gold standard.

Hydration

Hydration is a crucial factor in muscle pliability. Muscles that aren’t hydrated begin to look and feel like beef jerky instead of Grade-A steak. Consequently, they can’t absorb the forces thrown their way.

Proper hydration is critical for just about every biological process, including performance, recovery, and overall health.

Did you know that muscles are ~75% water?!

Water is needed for lubricating the tissue of fascia and muscle as they slide freely.

Therefore, if you aren’t sufficiently hydrated, your muscles won’t perform, respond, or recover optimally.

Reduce Inflammation

Nutrition is also a crucial factor after hydration in ensuring muscle pliability. What we put inside of our bodies has a direct impact on our muscles and in particular, our bodies’ inflammatory responses to certain foods.

A good diet is important for improving muscle pliability because ongoing inflammation in your tissues can lead to the degeneration of those tissues (Howard 2020).

As a result, if you do this long enough, your tissues will lose elasticity. Firstly, this occurs by changing the extracellular matrix composition and fiber alignment.

Secondly, instead of aligned and sliding collagen fibers in your connective tissue, chronic inflammation can stimulate crosslinks that restrict motion

Stretching is Not Enough to Improve Muscle Pliability

Stretching is a piece of the puzzle to gain or maintain your muscle pliability, but it’s not enough on its own. Movement through a full range is more effective because it stretches the muscles along with contracting them which has a greater effect.

For one thing, stretching helps more with the neurological control of muscle tension, not the actual physical muscle pliability (Ylinen, 2009).

Additionally, stretching doesn’t create the same stimulus for changes to the extra-cellar matrix in your connective tissue that influence pliability.

Foam Rolling

Foam rolling has become one of the go to practices in the fitness world as a way to “release” muscle adhesions. However, in recent years its taken some criticism as the pressures applied aren’t enough to actually deform fascial tissue or adhesions.

While true, this criticism may be missing the bigger picture. Foam rolling can aid in an individual’s awareness of muscle pliability. It increases their neurological input to the brain. Accessing the nervous system can help “release” muscle tension and trigger points neurologically, not structurally.

So along with moving, and between tissue work sessions, use that foam roller to help maintain your tissue quality!

Start Improving Your Muscle Pliability Today

Muscle pliability is a term that describes optimal muscle qualities. Pliable tissue is elastic and yielding. Furthermore, it is unrestricted, smooth, and supple.

Pliability is about more than muscle. It includes complete myofascial chains of muscles, tendons, and fascia.

If you want to move better, stay healthy, and enjoy the things you love more, then focus on improving your pliability with these basic strategies.

Mobility vs Flexibility: They Are Different And Why You Care

April 9, 2021July 7, 2019 by Velocity Sports Performance

People are often confused about the differences between mobility vs flexibility. It matters because it affects your athleticism and injury risk. Hope that gets your attention because it’s often the neglected and mis-understood step-child of training.

You probably recognize that athleticism has multiple facets. Strength, speed, and stamina are a few. To be fair, most people would probably include flexibility in there as well.

Maybe you were taught to stretch in gym class back in the day. Maybe you’ve read enough articles from trainers to know about foam rolling. How about endless pics of yoga and mobility work on social media?

You know there’s something that you should probably be doing, but why are some people talking about mobility and others flexibility. Aren’t these the same thing?

Mobility vs flexibility: Is there really a difference?

Yes. Mobility and flexibility are related but different things.

However, as you scroll through feed and listen to trainers talk, they are often used interchangeably. Most trainers in the fitness and performance training fields don’t even know they are different.

Traditional definition in sports medicine they would be;

FLEXIBILITY: The ability of a muscle to be lengthened.
MOBILITY: The ability of a joint to move through a range of motion

However, this is not what we are discussing here. We are not as interested in the traditional definition. We are more interested in the modern concepts that apply to injury prevention and performance.

Modern concept definition:

FLEXIBILITY: The ability of a muscle to be lengthened.
MOBILITY: The ability to control movement through a range of motion

Similar, but some key differences. The concept of mobility incorporates flexibility, but not necessarily vice-versa. The key for athletes is mobility. Flexibility isn’t enough.

Mobility is a term and concept that encompasses a range of factors affecting your movement including:

The tissues ability to lengthen
The joint ability to move
The nervous systems ability to relax and allow movement
The neuromuscular systems ability to activate muscles and control movement through all ranges of motion.

Flexibility is Important for Mobility

You do need enough flexibility in your muscles to obtain functional and sport specific mobility. This matters, as you are considering whether to work on mobility vs flexibility.

Flexibility is passive. It’s your ability to move your connective tissue with the help of another person or tool, or gravity. Your muscles passively allow the movement to happen.

muscle are elastic and should stretch like a rubber band

Think of flexibility like a rubber band. When you pull both ends, it stretches. It’s flexible. If it doesn’t stretch, it’s inflexible. If it’s too inflexible, it could even snap. It’s the same thing with muscles. They have elastic components and are designed to move through a stretch.

Flexibility also requires your joint capsule have a full range of motion as well. It doesn’t matter how stretchy your muscles are if the joint itself won’t allow the movement.

Since. mobility includes moving through a full range of motion, you are going to need to have some flexibility in those muscles to be mobile.

Mobility for Better Movement

The problem comes in when people think being flexible is enough. Sure you can stretch your body into all kinds of positions. Your muscle clearly have flexibility, but can they control it?

A person with great mobility is able to perform movement patterns with no restrictions. The movement is efficient and there aren’t any compensations. They have the range of motion and the neuromuscular control and strength to move through the pattern.

athletes need mobility to move efficiently

On the other hand, some people can perform a movement pattern successfully, but they compensate. They may fire some muscles in a different sequence, use different muscle for stability or avoid certain joint position.

A flexible person may or may not have the stabilizer strength, balance, or coordination to perform the same functional movements as the person with great mobility. This goes back to some of the fundamental differences of flexibility vs mobility.

Control. Control comes through the strength in your muscles. Control comes through coordination of those muscles. Control comes from properly functioning stabilizers.

How Do You Improve Mobility?

Mobility is important, and flexibility is a part of that. That doesn’t usaully mean you need to spend an extra hour in the gym every day. Incorporating a steady stream of exercises for both flexibility and mobility into you training plan will go a long way.

In addition to a general approach you should prioritize extra time for certain areas. You may already know the areas or your body that need to improve. Or maybe its specific to your sport. A comprehensive profile from a professional goes a long way towards targeting the areas that will get you the most bang for your buck.

Methods To Increase Mobility

Self Myo-Fascial techniques: Sometimes these may be excruciating but can be very effective. Foam rolling, lacrosse balls and other tools are basically a type of self-massage. These techniques help you release tight spots in your muscles.
Mobility Drills: These are exercises that are specifically geared towards training your range of motion around joints. They involve actively moving, contracting and relaxing muscles through the joints range of motion. Some of these may isolate, while others involve multi-joint movement patterns.
Stretching: This may or may not be necessary. If you’re naturally a very flexible person, stretching can make your joints more vulnerable to injury. However, if you’ve always been stiff, and it’s stopping you from moving well, you may benefit. Some targeted stretches may be enough both as part of the warm-up and separate from it.
Dynamic Warm-Up: Whether its 5 minutes or 30, a good dynamic warm-up can work wonders. This type of warm-up does more then only increase muscle temperature and blood. It incorporates all of the above with movement. You actually prep the elements of mobility as you prepare for the workout or competition.

Mobility Matters

Most athletes need to work on maintaining or improving their mobility. The strains and stresses of playing a sport add up. Repetitive motion puts uneven stress on your body and it adapts.

Mobility allows you to move as efficiently as possible. That means better performance and less risk of injury. In the end it not a question of mobility vs flexibility, but how you are going to maintain or improve them. Get it right so you can move your best.

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Velocity Speed Training Drills: Optimal Range of Motion

August 31, 2019May 21, 2019 by Velocity Sports Performance

The Velocity Speed Formula (read more about it here) uses proven speed training drills to make athletes faster. Whether its elite speed training or youth speed training, the Formula always has the same 4 parts;

Big Force
Small Time
Proper Direction
Optimal Range of Motion

Apply Force in the OPTIMAL RANGE OF MOTION

The range of motion your limbs and joints travel through while sprinting is a Goldilocks scenario; not too big, not too small, but just right.

If the limbs are traveling through too big a range of motion you may be wasting time and energy.

If the range is too small, you wont generate the power you need.

Optimal range of motion is developed by acquiring good motion through stretching and mobility work combined with dynamic mobility drills. Below we have a few of the speed training drills that help athletes develop the optimal range of motion for sprinting.

Kneeling Arm Action Drill

This drill to reinforce arm action has been around for a long time. The reason; it still helps athlete work on understanding the arm swing range of motion while running. One of the keys is that you want athletes using this drill to feel good spinal alignment with relaxed shoulders and neck.

Use this drill through various speeds, push faster until form, coordination or body position start to suffer. Then back the speed down and regain the form. Make sure the motion is from the shoulder. No “karate-chop” actions at the elbows.

Fast Leg Drill

There are many useful variations of the Fast Leg speed drill and multiple benefits. The one we are focusing on here is the range of motion. Specifically the range of motion when the leg recovers from behind the body and the thigh lifts in front. The higher the thigh lift, the more power the drive down and back can be.

This drill breaks up the sprinting motion so athletes can focus on the technical aspects. As always, great core posture is important.

Velocity Speed Formula

Both of these are important speed training drills to help athletes ability to apply force in the proper direction. These drills reinforce basics physics so athletes can accelerate faster.

4 Myths about Muscle Pliability You Need to Know

January 13, 2020January 25, 2018 by Velocity Sports Performance

The term “muscle pliability” has been in the news around the NFL quite a bit. Tom Brady and his trainer, Alex Guerrero, claim that making muscles pliable is the best way to sustain health and performance. How true is that claim? While it’s a great descriptive term, we are going to shed some light on what it really means and how to create muscle pliability.

Defining Words

Our performance coaches, sports medicine specialists, and tissue therapists all find it to be a useful term. Pliable expresses some of the important qualities of muscle. According to Miriam-Webster Dictionary here’s what pliable means:

Pliable
a: supple enough to bend freely or repeatedly without breaking
b: yielding readily to others
c: adjustable to varying conditions

That’s a pretty good description for many of the qualities we want in the tissue of an athlete (or any human for that matter). The problem is that it’s being mixed up with a lot of inaccurate and confusing statements.

Our Sports Medicine Specialist, Misao Tanioka, says that “the word pliability, in my opinion, depicts the ideal muscle tissue quality. It is similar to suppleness, elasticity, or resilience. Unfortunately, I believe some of the explanations offered by Mr. Brady and Mr. Guerrero have created some misunderstanding of what ‘muscle pliability’ really is.”

Let’s try and separate some of the myths from what is true.

Myth 1: Muscles that are “soft” are better than dense

That depends on what qualifies as “soft” muscle. Tissue Specialist Cindy Vick has worked on hundreds of elite athletes, including NFL players and Olympians across many sports. “Soft isn’t a word I would use for an athlete. When I’m working on an elderly client, I often feel muscles that could be called soft; they’re not dense. That’s not what I feel when working on elite athletes. Athletes who are healthy and performing well have muscles that have density without being overly tense and move freely. The tissue is still smooth and supple.”

This muscle quality is affected by many factors, ranging from stress, competition, nutrition, training, and recovery. At Velocity, maintaining optimal tissue quality is a constant endeavor. Proper self-myofascial release, various stretching techniques, and manual therapy are all part of the equation.

MORE INFO: Mobility vs Flexibility: They are different and it matters for athletes

Myth 2: Dense muscles = stiff muscles = easily injured athletes

Relating these terms in this way grossly over-simplifies reality and is in some ways completely wrong.

You have to start with the operative word: “dense.” Tanioka says, “Dense tissue can be elastic; elastic tissue is resilient to injury. What we have to look for is inelastic tissue.” Cindy Vick adds that “if you mean ‘dense’ to refer to a muscle with adhesions, or that doesn’t move evenly and smoothly, then yes, that’s a problem.”

Scientifically, stiffness refers to how much a muscle resists stretch under tension. It’s like thinking about the elastic qualities of a rubber band. The harder it is to pull, the stiffer it is. If a muscle can’t give and stretch when it needs to, that’s bad.

Imagine a rubber band that protects your joint. When a muscle exerts a force against the impact of an opponent or gravity, stiffness can help resist the joint and ligaments from being overloaded and consequently injured.

“I agree with Mr. Brady’s statement about the importance of a muscle’s ability to lengthen, relax and disperse high-velocity, heavy incoming force to avoid injury,” says Tanioka. “However, I think that athletes also must be able to exert maximum power whether actively generating force or passively resisting incoming stress, which requires the ability to shorten and be taut and firm as well as lengthen. The ability of the tissue to be durable and contractile is just as important as to elongate and soften when it comes to performance and injury prevention.”

In the view of our experts, it’s not about dense, soft, stiff, or other qualitative words. Instead, they emphasize developing function through different types of strength qualities athletes need. Athletes must prepare for the intense stress and strain their muscles will face in their sport. They need to blend the right strength training with mobility and flexibility.

Myth 3: Strength training makes muscles short

“It’s an old wives’ tale that took hold when bodybuilding techniques had a big influence on strength and conditioning. A muscle can be incredibly strong without sacrificing any range of motion” according to international expert and President of Velocity Sports Performance, Ken Vick, who has worked with athletes in 10 Olympic Games and helped lead the Chinese Olympic Committee’s preparation efforts for 2016 Rio Olympic Games.

“I’ll give you two great examples: Gymnasts are, pound-for-pound, very strong and incredibly explosive, yet they are known to be some of the most flexible athletes. Olympic weightlifters are clearly some of the strongest athletes in the world and are also generally very flexible. They spend practically every day doing strength training and their muscles aren’t ‘short’.”

In fact, proper lifting technique demands excellent flexibility and mobility. For example, poor hip flexor flexibility or limited ankle mobility results in an athlete who probably cannot reach the lowest point of a back squat. Our proven methods combine strength training with dynamic mobility, movement training, and state of the art recovery technology to help our athletes gain and maintain the flexibility and mobility required for strength training and optimal performance on the field of competition.

Myth 4: Plyometrics and band training are better for pliability

We hear these types of claims time and again from coaches, trainers, and others who are quoting something they’ve read without much knowledge of the actual training science. Our muscles and brain don’t care if the resistance is provided by bodyweight, bands, weights, cables, or medicine balls. They can all be effective or detrimental, depending on how they are used.

Sports science has shown that manipulating different variables influences both the physiological and neurological effects of strength training. Rate of motion, movement patterns, environment, and type of resistance all influence the results.

Truth: Muscle Pliability is a good thing

Like so many ideas, muscle pliability is a very good concept. The challenge lies in discerning and then conveying what is true and what is not. An experienced therapist can, within just a few moments of touching a person, tell whether that tissue is healthy. A good coach can tell whether an athlete has flexibility or mobility problems, or both, simply by watching them move.

In either case, it takes years of experience and understanding of the human body and training science, like that which is possessed by the performance and sports medicine staff at Velocity, to correctly apply a concept like muscle pliability to an athlete’s training program.