ABSTRACT
Flexibility is an important health-related dimension of tness (American College of Sports Medicine [ACSM], 2011) and is dened as the ability of an individual to move a joint through its complete range of motion (ROM; ACSM, 2010) or the ROM that a joint is able to move through without experiencing pain (ompson et al., 2010). Flexibility also is dened as the total achievable excursion (within the limits of pain) of a body part through its ROM and typically is enhanced by the process of stretching (Jenkins & Beazell, 2010). e ability of a muscle and its related noncontractile tissues, such as ligaments and tendons, to fully extend determines the exibility of a specic joint (Ganley et al., 2011). e determinants of exibility also may be divided into static (tissues, stage of collagen subunits in the tissue, inammation, and temperature of tissue) and dynamic factors (neuromuscular variables, such as voluntary muscle control and the inherent neuromuscular feedback to the musculotendinous unit) and external factors (such as pain). Flexibility usually is assessed in terms of ROM measured by one of the following tools: a goniometer, the Leighton exometer, or the electrogoniometer (Ganley et al., 2011). Field tests, such as the commonly used sit-and-reach test, oer alternatives to such assessments, although normative data for children are lacking.
