As a former "gym bunny" and professional horse trainer for over 15 years, I do know the frustrations of retraining your muscles for a new sport/activity. When I began to get seriously into Yoga and then Belly Dance, I had the darndest time with my overdeveloped and extremely tight hamstrings, quads and upper back muscles. It took YEARS to build those muscles in a certain fashion and it took a long time to "rebuild" them for these new physical movements that required more stretching and flexing than contracting and holding.

Some things were super easy, because they used muscles groups in a way that had become second nature; from the start I could do lower abdominal contractions like a demon! But other things were near impossible or even painful because they asked my muscles to work in the polar opposite of what I had always done (such as straighten my arms gracefully above my head or do decent layback). It was feast or famine for almost the first two years! I am just NOW beginning to feel more balanced in my power/flexibility ratios.

The other factor to consider is that when you ask muscles to "de-evolve" and reshape themselves, it's easy to overdo it and you can injure yourself without realizing you are doing so, until it's too late. I learned that the hard way by pushing too fast to lengthen and stretch my hammies, and ended up tearing them. Six months of recoup and lower back issues from that little mistake. NO FUN!

From personal experience, my advice is to work on creating balance in your body, but not to push it. Just because we once excelled at one sport, doesn't mean we are going to immediately be superstars in another. Our bodies take time to rewire, rebuild and adjust, especially as we get "older".

And I've learned the advantages and wonders of a really good massage therapist, too. They should be lauded as gods/goddesses! LOL

i'm wondering, does stretching help to prevent uuber specialization in the muscles or is it more or less inevitable after enough training in a certain activity?