Stretching It: The Truth about Stretching

Stretching by Tobyotter

The perceived benefits of stretching are that they make your muscles more flexible and will protect you from injury. The truth is that they do neither. According to a recent New York Times article, old fashioned stretching just doesn’t deliver the goods. When the Times talks about stretching it’s talking about the kind of stretching you probably learned as a kid or at the urging of a coach or from a book on stretching. It’s the kind of stretching that you felt obligated to do but didn’t continue because you didn’t feel it did you much good. It was generally painful, unpleasant, and failed to make you more flexible. The good news is you were right to stop because it didn’t work.

This old fashioned stretching was over sold before it was understood.

New York Times reporter Gretchen Reynolds wrote an interesting piece on stretching Phys Ed: How Necessary Is Stretching? If you don’t have time to read it in its entirety, here are some of the highlights.

Women are more flexible than men.

Flexibility is not “a cornerstone of health and fitness.”

“It’s been drummed into people that they should stretch, stretch, stretch — that they have to be flexible,” says Dr. Duane Knudson, teacher of biomechanics at Texas State University in San Marcos, and an expert on flexibility and muscle reaction. “But there’s not much scientific support for that.”

The newest science indicates that excess flexibility is undesirable, unnecessary, and unachievable.

“To a large degree, flexibility is genetic,” says Dr. Malachy McHugh, director of research for the Nicholas Institute of Sports Medicine and Athletic Trauma at New York’s Lenox Hill Hospital and an authority on flexibility. Either you’re born supple or stiff. “Some small portion’ of each person’s flexibility ‘is adaptable,’ McHugh says, “but it takes a long time and a lot of work to get even that small adaptation. It’s a bit depressing, really.”

Stretching after a run or workout won’t lengthen your muscles making you more flexible, nor will it increase your range of motion.

There are two pieces to stretching a muscle, according to Dr. McHugh: first the muscle, second the mind. It’s not your muscle that becomes more flexible over time, it’s your mind and the message it sends to the muscle telling it to stretch a little further. The structure of the muscle will not change but your tolerance to pain will. Thus the illusion of a gain in flexibility with stretching, is just that an illusion. “You’ll start to develop a tolerance” for the pain of stretching, Dr. McHugh says. The fact that you can hold a stretch longer over time is a function of your mind accepting the stretch and not your muscles or tendons growing permanently longer. Sadly even this illusion of flexibility is fleeting says Dr. McHugh.

Changing the physical structure of a muscle takes months of hard painful work and sessions lasting hours. Still the changes you can expect are small.

And for most of us there is no reason to. “Flexibility is a functional thing,” Dr. Knudson says. “You only need enough range of motion in your joints to avoid injury. More is not necessarily better.”

Traditional Running Stretches Don't Work

Admit it: Traditional stretching doesn’t work for you, me or most runners. The standard stretches recommended for runners are ineffective and often harmful. They don’t reduce our likelihood of injury. They don’t help us run faster. They don’t even feel good. Why not try something that does?

Ninety percent of runners don’t stretch after running, and feel guilty about it. Forget the guilt, if you don’t stretch it’s probably because your body is aware, even if your mind is not, that these classic running stretches are a waste of time.

A few runners do need these stretches. Their bodies require them, and they should continue them. The remaining 90% should lose their guilt and try something that's effective.

Thirty Years of Failure
For more than 30-years runners have been told that a handful of classic running stretches prevent running injuries. They’ve been told wrong. There is no persuasive evidence to suggest that these running stretches prevent injury. In fact, it’s more likely that they cause injury.

Not Simple
Runners have been told that these stretches are simple to do. It just ain’t true. To stretch a muscle as prescribed by the advocates of these stretches is anything but simple. It requires precision that most of us will never master. First you have to identify the muscle or muscle groups that need stretching, and then apply just the right intensity for just the right amount of time to get the right benefit. There are more than 600 muscles in your body so identifying the precise muscle you need to stretch is not easy. Then delivering the stretch to that specific muscle with just the right intensity and timing takes training, skill, and luck. These traditional stretches cause most runners more pain than pleasure, more harm than good.

Stretching Can be Dangerous
The advocates of traditional stretching usually warn if the stretch is not performed correctly it does little good and may be harmful. According to stretching authority Bob Anderson, author of the classic book Stretching, “Improper stretching is worse than no stretching at all and leads to injuries.” (p.173) He goes on to conclude that most runners he’s witnessed “do it completely wrong.”

Running Coaches Warn Against Stretching
For most runners, the classically recommended running stretches are either dangerous or unnecessary. The great running coaches, of whom I’m aware, warn their runners against stretching. Arthur Lydiard said stretching was unnecessary, believing that runners naturally stretch their legs while running, especially when running hills, and did not need special stretching routines. Frank Shorter echoed this theme when I was training with him last year.

Mark Allen’s coach, Phil Maffatone, suggested that stretching did runners more harm than good. Runner and coach Jeff Galloway believes that stretching is the third biggest cause of running injuries. He says he hasn’t stretched in 20-years and feels no ill effects (See page 152 of Galloway’s Book on Running, 2nd edition ).

Reducing Injuries
What are traditional running stretches good for? Increasing range of motion. Most running injuries have nothing to do with range of motion. They’re invariably overuse injuries caused by weakness in the muscle tissue not inflexibility. If you want to reduce your chances of getting injured, make your muscles stronger not more flexible.

If you want to stretch to reduce your chances of getting injured, combine it with strengthening as in yoga and Pilates. Because practitioners of these disciplines strengthen their muscles while they stretch them, these practices will reduce your likelihood of injury.

A Better Way
There is a better way to stretch. It’s simple to learn, and easy to do. It will reduce your likelihood of injury. It feels good. And it will help you run faster. It's called trigger point therapy. I've written a couple of article on them. If you want to learn more click here and here.