I was sitting in a particular position such that my legs fell asleep. When they recovered just enough so I could stand but they were still numb and pins and needly, I got the idea that stretching my hamstrings might make the feeling come back quicker. To my surprise, I was able to lift each leg in turn very high, about 90 degrees! Normally they are so tight that they don’t go above 45 degrees without a lot of effort or patience. When the numbness eventually went away, they became tight again.
I’m wondering what causes this phenomenon. My friend theorized I was able to do this because there was no “stretching pain”. But usually when I stretch, just the tension itself is an obstacle long before pain is.
Now I was under the impression that the tension in our muscles was an actual physical property of the muscles - that developing flexibility was a matter of gradually changing the structure of the muscles. But this event makes it seem like flexibility is just a matter of nerve impulses and if you took a muscle relaxant or were say hypnotized, you could be super flexible immediately without any long term training. What’s the scoop?