Flexibility is an ongoing discussion amongst strength coaches and personal trainers. Some are all for it and view it as a vital element of performance, others aren’t as convinced. Physiotherapists share similar contrasting viewpoints.
To clear up the issue once and for all, we’re going to look at the evidence around stretching, flexibility and mobility and draw conclusions from the science, not opinions. We’ll end the article with some recommendations that will help you improve muscle suppleness and injury resistance.
The history of stretching
If we cast our minds back, stretching was something PE teachers and amateur sports coaches used to make us do ahead of a sporting activity. It didn’t matter how cold it was, the ‘warm up’ involved stretching various body parts before engaging in a full-steam-ahead sporting activity!
We now know that this is, well, stupid.
The risk of injury is significantly higher at lower temperatures. What we know from the research is that when the muscle tissue temperature drops, it’s much easier to tear, so for this reason it’s good advice to NEVER stretch a cold muscle. We’ve written about cold weather exercise on the blog in the past, but now we’re back in the winter it’s always good to have a little reminder of what we need to consider.
So whether or not you are going to stretch, just make sure you ONLY ever stretch a warm muscle, never a cold one. The injury risk isn’t worth it and and the immediate benefit isn’t there.
Types of stretching
There are essentially three types of stretching - active, passive and isometric.
Active stretching is where you progressively move the limbs to achieve a stretch. This can be anything from a small ‘bounce’ to a more aggressive, high speed movement known as ballistic stretching.
Whilst there are certain movement pattern benefits to these movements, as a tool designed to improve flexibility in athletes, they don’t get muscle support in the research. The injury risk is higher than other types and the benefits just don’t stack up.
Passive stretching is more commonly known as static stretching, where you stretch the target muscle and stay in that position for a given amount of time, often practiced in yoga. Research suggests passive stretching is an effective tool for improving flexibility, but doubts are raised over its effectiveness for athletes (especially pre-event) given potential reduction in muscle force generation associated with passive stretching.
In English, if you want to be more flexible, it’s absolutely fine - just don’t do it close to a sporting activity because it makes muscles temporarily weaker.
Isometric stretching is a form of stretching that involves tensing of the target muscle whilst it is in a stretched position. The muscle itself doesn’t change length dramatically – the length of the stretch isn’t increased. The effectiveness comes from the fact that whilst contracting in a stretched position, the muscle overrides the ‘stretch reflex’, allowing it to extend beyond its normal range of movement.
This is known as ‘Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation’ or ‘PNF’ stretching. It has been shown to both improve performance and flexibility, so is commonly used in sporting context.
Is stretching worth it?
This is the million dollar question and there’s no right or wrong answer - the best answer comes from the use case. Why are you stretching and what are you looking to achieve?
The evidence is clear that if you want to improve your flexibility (and you probably should - flexibility is a useful thing to have), then stretching is the best way to achieve it. There are other ways (massage, foam rollers, relaxation techniques etc), but they aren’t as targeted and effective at pushing a muscle and connective tissues to end range.
What you have to be careful of is how and when you stretch and the basic advice is this…
NEVER stretch a cold muscle. Always warm it up first - whether that’s a hot bath or shower, exercise or a sauna. Just raise the temperature and improve blood flow.
If it’s before exercise, use a PNF stretching approach.
If you’re not about to train or compete in sport and are literally just doing some flexibility work, static stretching or yoga is very effective. Just make sure you’re warm first.
Whilst there’ll always be experts who love the click-bait, outlandish claims about stretching being useless etc, the evidence simply doesn’t back this up. There’s certainly uses for stretching, you just have to pick the right type and do it at the right time.
Follow the advice in this article and you’ll do just that!
If you want your health and fitness journey to be guided by the best personal training team in East London, get in touch with us at AdMac Fitness. We operate from our private personal training studio in Bow, E3. Contact us on 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you.