Özet:

Introduction: aiming at extensibility gain, muscle stretching stands out, which is often combined with cryotherapy, but with contradictory results in the literature. Objective: The objective of this study was to identify gains in the extensibility of ischiotibial muscles in sedentary women after cryostretching. Materiais e Methods: 30 women participated in the study, separated into three groups: cryoalonging, stretching or control. For cryostretching, ice packs were used over the region of the ischiotibial muscles for 15 minutes, then the volunteers performed three 30-second series of static stretching of the ischiotibial muscles; the group that performed only the stretching, after the initial evaluation, waited 15 minutes and was also submitted to the static stretching procedure; finally for the control group, the initial evaluation was performed, waited the time related to the procedures described and re-evaluated. The evaluation were: Wells bench and a goniometric board, before and soon after the procedures. Results: for the Wells bench it was possible to observe amplitude gains in all groups, but, the greatest effect size was presented in the cryostretch group. For the goniometric board, evaluated passively, the group that presented the best significant results was the stretching group; the evaluation in active form presented gains for the two groups that performed stretching, and again the effect sizes were larger in the cryostretching group. Conclusion: cryostretching produced greater gains of extensibility in active movements, but it was not better than stretching only when the passive movement was evaluated.

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