The topic of stretching is like flossing your teeth, everyone agrees that it’s good for you, many people don’t practice it, and if they do, they may not actually do it well.
I do not claim complete knowledge of the topic of stretching, and we will see that different contexts call for a different approach to stretching. However, there are some general guidelines that anyone can follow, and those are what I will outline today.
Before we get started on the article proper, note that I’m describing stretching for the general population of recreational athletes, not for a sports specific application. This is important, because we must ask…
Why Stretch?
If you’re a gymnast, well you have to stretch to ensure that you can do splits, tucks, etc. In other words, for a sports-specific application, we stretch so that our muscles enable us to attain a required range of motion to be able to perform our sport.
For the average person, stretching certain key groups can help to improve posture. The best example would be the hip flexors:
Image Credit: Sportsinjury.info
Prolonged sitting oftentimes causes the hip flexors to shorten, which leads to excessive anterior pelvic tilt:
Image Credit: Medline Plus
Not only does this look ugly, it can cause several problems, especially with the lower back.
In other words, stretching can improve your posture, which thus prevents pain.
Different Types of stretching
Now that we know why to stretch, let’s get down to how to stretch. There are quite a few variations on stretching, but since this is a general article, I’ll be talking mostly about static stretching. This is, the type of stretching whereby you slowly move into a position where a stretch is felt in the desired muscle, and then the position is held for a period of time.
While there are other types of stretching (you can view some examples here), static stretching will suffice for the general population.
What Stretches Do I do?
That’s a great question, and the sort of stretches may depend largely on the context.
For example, a gymnast seeking crazy range-of-motion (ROM) may opt for a different stretching routine from an athlete who recently pulled his hamstring. The former context demands ROM as the main goal, while the latter condition would be rehabilitation (note also that a pulled muscle is less elastic and more prone to being “overstretched”).
For a general purpose solution, I recommend using the stretches in Mike Robertson’s article, “Hardcore Stretching Part 2“.
When do I do them?
In general, there is no bad time to go about stretching. Some people religiously preach stretching before a warmup, while others talk about stretching after a warmup.
In the article “Warming up for the weights room: part 1“, Lyle McDonald outlines the role of stretching in a warmup. To sum up his message, he personally thinks that one should perform some type of stretching before a workout, and has a preference for dynamic stretching.
All of this should be taken against the backdrop of achieving the range-of-motion necessary to perform the activity. That said, he has written an extensive research review on static stretching before a workout, and outlines the reasons it may or may not be suitable for the context.
How do I go about doing them?
In the article “Myths and Truths of Stretching” by Ian Shier and Kav Gossal, the authors make several recommendations based on scientific evidence for an optimal stretching routine.
They make many great points. Some notable points include the fact that there a optimal length of time that a a stretch should be held for maximum benefits. They cited research showing that stretching a muscle for 60 seconds yield no extra benefit as compared to when the muscle was stretched for 30 seconds. This varies between individuals however, and they state that individuals should experiment to find a time
They also showed that a single stretch held for approximately 30 seconds gave the same benefit as three similar 30 second stretches spread throughout the day.
These are just some of the points noted in the article, and I recommend reading the entire article for a better overview.
If you get nothing else out of this article:
- Get a list of stretches and find out how to perform them
- For each stretch, slowly increase the stretch just before a point of pain, and hold for a length of approximately 30 seconds.
- Rinse and repeat on a daily basis, going through each stretch once a day.
Final Words
Stretching isn’t rocket science, show up every day and the benefits are yours.
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