- Forcing your muscles??

[Iceman]

Maybe it sounds strange, but what's the story about forcing your muscles??

To explain a bit more precisely I'll use the following example:
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In China/Thailand you sometimes see that children from about 10/12 years are forced to learn the splits (side/front, whatever) on a very brutal way...
With this (very hard) way these children learn the splits.

I saw it many times on tv, so I know it's really happening.

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- I'm questioning myself what kind of effects to your body this kind of training has...
If you ask me, your muscles will get very damaged when you force them.

--> But on the other hand I have the following thought about it: "although your muscles are damaged (due to the brutal forcing), if you just keep doing the splits every day (which you learned in 1 or 2 days), your muscles will automaticaly heal itself after a while"


I'm curious about your opinion, does any-one have any experience in this method??
(I also heard that with ballet/turning you are also forced, so if you ask me it's a sort of wellknown method)

[wynnema]

Forcing muscles is a dated and a stupid way to try and improve your flexibilty. The potential for injury is very high. Also developing flexibilty without an increase in strength can also lead to injury. Children are usually more flexible than adults and their muscles can take a lot more grief.

Believe it or not, trying to improve your athletic performance through a continuous injury/heal cycle is not very smart.