Myth 5
You can stretch the protective sheath around the muscle (called the fascia), and create more "room" in it for the muscle to grow.
Fact:
Several popular bodybuilding programs incorporate the so-called "fascia stretching" techniques to increase muscle size. There actually is a small body of scientific literature indiciating that there may be potential to get some muscle growth from intense stretching - in untrained rodents, using a protocol that would be severely impractical, if not impossible, to replicate in a normal person. The proposed mechanism of action is from genomic expression of proteins related to muscle growth. The same studies also noted an increase in myostatin signalling - which impairs muscle growth. At best, the jury is out on stretching to increase muscle size, although if it does, its got nothing to do with stretching the fascia to give the muscle "more room to grow".
