In recent months I see more and more practitioners and clients who tell me that they want to, or are currently working on “improving their range of motion”. When I ask them to show me some of the movements or stretches they are using, the result is always basically the same, a global stretch or movement sequence of some sort.
The muscles of the body are each “wrapped in a plastic bag” that we call the fascia. The fascia of the muscle is continuous with the joint capsule and other structures in relation to it. If you want to improve the quality of movement of the “structure in the bag” as well as the quality of the joint capsule, which is also a fascia, then use Myo-fascial Stretching over other modalities. After, you can use the global movements. What you will see is that as the fascial tension changes so will the tension of the muscle in the bag and if you then want to change the length of the muscle, you can do so.