Feel the Burn Thursday

Helloooooo, ladies :)
Hope you're all making it a great day!
I had a very involved anatomy & physiology lecture last night for my yoga teacher training class, and then I have a cadaver lab for it this Saturday, and so I've got muscles on my mind!  You all probably know this, but I liked it:

• Stretching muscles is actually a misnomer.  Your muscles don't ever become longer.  Through stretching and movement, you're showing your muscles their full, normal range of motion with the purpose of them memorizing that full motion and becoming more fully utilized to their full potential.  Kind of a fun way of looking at it.
• Cartiledge doesn't have any blood cells in it like muscles do, so for it to "heal" when damaged, it has to pull its nutrients and healing materials from the bones it's connected to.  Hence it takes a LONG time for cartiledge injuries to heal.  Muscles have blood cells in them and the healing blood courses through them, so muscles heal pretty quickly.  Hang in there, Meghan!
• Ligaments (connect bone to bone, like ankles), once stretched out can't ever be stretched back.  So if you've rolled your foot (this is for you, Mini Me!) once, you're very likely to keep rolling it over and over again your whole life.  Same w/ sprains.  So be gentle on your ligaments and be careful to not over-extend joints when stretching, standing, doing yoga, sports, etc.  Always avoid "locking" your knees, but put a small "microbend' in it so that it's solid, straight, strong, but non-damaging and gentle.
• All workouts and physical activity should cause you to "feel the burn & strength" in the "belly" of the muscle, never the ends of the muscle where they connect to other things.  So when in a lunge for instance, you should never feel the burn in the leg muscles close to the knee or close to the hip.  You should be properly aligned so that you feel the burn in the belly of the thigh muscle, the center of the thigh, it's meatiest part.  If you do feel it towards the ends/connective areas of the muscles, you're going too far for it to be beneficial for you and you're likely to do damage and cause undue stress/tension.
• An issue somewhere in your body could very likely be caused elsewhere.  For instance, last fall when I was running crazy mileage, I'd get sore hips when I hit about 15 miles.  My running shoe sales guy (an ironman) told me that it most likely was due to tight hamstrings pulling down on my hips.  Extra stretching & yoga cured the dull hip pain like a charm.  And then we talked about just this last night in yoga.  If someone has sore knees, it COULD be because they're quads, hamstrings, etc. are really really tight and are tugging funny on the knee ligaments/tendons.  If someone has a lot of tension in their low back, it could be b/c tight legs are tugging on the hips which are tugging on the low back or just tight hips tugging on the low back.  Everything's so interconnected- it's crazy!  Just another fun way to think of things.

So what great workouts have you been up to this week????  Anybody do anything fun & active over the long holiday weekend?