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Invited Commentary

JM Walker, PhD, PT, is Professor and Director, School of Physiotherapy, Dalhousie University, 5869 University Ave, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada B3H 3J5

This excerpt was created in the absence of an abstract.

The authors are to be commended for investigating the effect of time, stretching over a 6-week period, on the flexibility of the hamstring muscles. Both amateur and professional sport persons, as well as many ordinary people who daily walk, jog, or run, do flexibility exercises as part of their warm-up routine. As the authors note, there have been a number of investigations into different combinations of heat and cold with stretching, but no longitudinal studies have been reported that have examined static stretches on flexibility.

Although many, including the authors, tend to relate flexibility solely to a muscle group, it is, in healthy subjects, more likely that biochemical alterations in collagen and elastin structure account for variation among individuals in laxity ... flexibility, and for interethnic differences. The unit of concern is the muscle-tendon unit and specifically the passive elements of that unit, connective tissues predominantly composed of collagen....

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