Improving connective tissue length to improve mobility with low load long duration stretching

Have you lost motion in your knee? How about another joint? Sometimes, these losses in motion can be attributed to stiffness and shortening of the connective tissues around your joints. This happens sometimes after knee, hip, and shoulder surgeries, after fracture, or after periods of immobilization in a cast, sling, or walking boot. Other times, these changes can be attributed to bony changes that occur over years and are less amenable to change. When losses in mobility are attributable to soft tissue, doing stretches for long periods of time elicit your tissues to grow - the cells that make up the connective tissues (called fibroblasts) are signaled to produce growth in the tissues and the tissues themselves become more elastic. After being cleared for stretching exercise, it is worth starting with a couple of minutes of stretching so long as it is not inducing tremendous amounts of pain, and gradually increasing. To manage particularly significant stiffness, some protocols even encourage dozens of minutes or even a couple of hours a day of stretching if tolerated.