There are many well known and accepted small things each of us can do everyday to help our overall health in significant ways, and for the most part, the basic understanding of each is well understood. We all know that moderate exercise, keeping hydrated, and eating a variety of fresh unprocessed food is simply smart decisions for our long term well being. Getting into the habit of practicing each regularly is often a major barrier for most of us. This all holds true for stretching as well. We all know its something that we should do, but that alone hasn’t helped the majority of the population achieve accountability to do it. Why should we stretch, and what are the benefits? What is the best way to stretch? How long should we stretch for? Are there methods and times that we should avoid it?

 

Let’s first get to the why of stretching. Aside from the obvious factor of it helping us become more flexible by increasing our range of motion, it also helps prevent injury for both the avid exerciser and sedentary individual alike. When a muscle gets tight or knotted, it becomes shorter. A shortened muscle doesn’t have the same amount of power, strength, and endurance as a fully elastic and pliable muscle.  So keeping with a strict stretch regiment will help full athletic performance.

 

Even if you don’t consider yourself an athlete, or aren’t currently competing, you want to be able to activate a muscle through its entire ROM. If you look at the exercise of a squat, the goal is to come down to where the knees and hips are at least 90 degrees and then blast upward using predominately your quadriceps. If you don’t use the full ROM, the muscle fibers that are activated in the lower position will never get the strength increase and activation, which will lead to muscle imbalances and may cause it’s own slew of issues and injuries.

 

One of the biggest questions which is frequently argued in the medical and performance cultures is how long should we be stretching each muscle or muscle group? This applies mostly to static ischemic stretches which are held for “x” amount of time, and is the gold standard so to speak for stretching. There are multiple types of stretches, which a few will be discussed shortly.

 

Firstly, one needs to make sure that they are physically prepared to stretch. Though this may sound odd, warming up to some degree for any style of stretch is quite important to allow the muscles to engorge with blood and become more pliable. Think about our muscles in this context as taffy. Taffy candy is very hard and brittle while cold, but warm it up slightly and it can stretch and flex nearly ten fold. Our muscles work in a similar fashion. So whether it be a hot shower, a light jog, some low level jump rope, a dynamic warm-up, or some other means of mild aerobic activity, having blood flow moving into the area will help prevent strains and sprains from the stretch.

 

Static held stretches is what we are most accustomed to, such as the hamstring stretch where we are standing and flex forward as if reaching to touch the floor. As with any stretch the goal is to keep it held at a minor discomfort but without causing any pain. There’s no debate on the fact that this works in terms of helping general flexibility, but the questions arise for when it should be performed and for how long.

 

Growing up participating in sports like many of us, I was accustomed to doing a few static stretches for 10 to 30 seconds prior to engaging in a sport’s practice or competition. Recent literature suggests that this may not be best, and could in turn actually increase the risk of injury. When we hold a stretch, even for a few seconds, we aren’t just stretching the muscle, but also everything that is surrounding it as well such as the blood supply in arteries and veins.  During a stretch, our muscle begins to have a limited blood supply and “cools” off by becoming ischemic (lacking of oxygen). The last thing we want is to perform a good stre