Stretch-Shortening Cycle (SSC): How it Relates to Exercise

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Stretch-shortening cycle (SSC)
The stretch-shortening cycle denotes the action of muscles undergoing pre-stretching and counter-movement, particularly in high-intensity movements such as vertical jumping or running. The cycle occurs in three phases: eccentric, amortization, and concentric. In the eccentric phase, the body undergoes pre-stretching as the body dips down, causing the lengthening of the muscles (Gruber, Kramer, Mulder & Rittweger, 2019). The next phase is amortization, the standby phase where the body relaxes. Here, the body undergoes elastic recoil from muscle lengthening by utilizing the stored energy in the tendons to facilitate the shortening of the lengthened muscles through messages to the brain. In the concentric phase, the contract agonistic muscle fibers activate and move through the spinal cord to the quadrant muscles, causing them to contract and shorten. The stored energy from the amortization phase pushes an individual up during an exercise as muscles contract (Gruber et al., 2019).
How SSC relates to exe...