Is Stretching Good For You?

Stretching…. Is it really good for you? 

Lots of my patients think that stretching is extremely beneficial and something that they should be doing a lot of. However, if you’ve seen the exercises that I post on social media and on YouTube, a lot of them are not just static stretching and there’s a reason for that. The exercises I give to patients are typically dynamic stretching, strengthening, core strength, or breath focused.  

I also recently shared about my hip injury and my journey to healing it. A big component of why I had such an injury is static stretching and pushing my joint through that normal range of motion for the sport or activity I was doing. Below, I will talk about the three types of stretching and the research surrounding these types.

Static Stretching

This is the kind that most people think of when stretching is talked about. Static stretching is when you get into a stretch and hold it for a long period of time. Typically, people tend to think that they should do static stretching before they do an activity (their sport or running).  They do it cold. This is a recipe for injury.  I don’t know about all gyms, but my local YMCA is air-conditioned to an arctic temp. I used to be on the board there and I lobbied for having less air-conditioning and trying to keep it warm. This is because being warm before you do an activity helps prevent injuries. I was vetoed.  Apparently reducing sweating trumps injury prevention. Haha.

For static stretching, one of the most current papers that have come out, shows us that there is no benefit to static stretching beyond 15 seconds. That’s even shorter than I had once thought. If you stretch beyond 15 seconds, it loses its benefits for the tissue you are trying to stretch. Another interesting effect of static stretching is that it DECREASES your strength and muscle output afterwards.  This should blow your mind if you have spent time doing long sustained stretching before you compete in a sport or try to max out in crossfit, lifting, etc.  

Static stretching IS useful when rehabbing muscle tears. THe spindles in the muscle tend to get clumped together when a tear happens and static stretching helps to draw those fibers apar and allow them to lie back down into place. 

Ballistic Stretching                                                                                                                     

When you hear ballistic stretching, think B for bouncing. I danced forever and we had whole classes of stretching that mostly consisted of static and some ballistic stretching. We would stretch and sit in splits for minutes and someone would push or press on us.

If you are in gymnastics, dance, cheerleading , etc., do not let someone press on you because it could encourage injury.

Dynamic Stretching

This is where a lot of  the good benefits come from. In most of my videos, they involve a dynamic component to it. There are many different types of dynamic stretching and the usual ones are inactive kinds of stretching. The most common types of dynamic stretching are Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation or PNF, Post-Facilitation Stretch or PFS developed by Dr. Vladimir Janda, and Post-isometric Relaxation or PIR developed  by Karel Lewit.

For PNF, if you are stretching your hamstring, you will be lying on your back, have your leg up in the air, and somebody will be standing beside it and you are going to push a hundred percent of your effort into that person contracting the hamstring. When you relax, they push on it and help stretch past that range of motion that you have.

For PIR, it is less of a contraction than PNF. Think of it as less than a hundred percent of the contraction when you do PNF stretching. Basically, the theory behind PIR is that you are just going to shorten the tissue before you lengthen it and you will be doing repetition and not be holding it in one position only. You will shorten, then lengthen, then shorten again, then lengthen. PIR is heavily involved in the exercises that I show on social media.

Research shows that shortening and lengthening the muscle can help to decrease the tonicity or tension of a trigger point. If you have a big trigger point in your trap, sometimes just holding that stretch forever and trying to get it to release or rubbing it doesn’t always do the trick.  You might need to shorten and lengthen that muscle for a certain amount of repetitions for a dynamic stretch. That helps with how the brain views that area and that’s what creates the tonicity in that muscle.

Tightness has so much more of a neuro basis behind it and I think people are conditioned into wanting their therapist or chiropractor to really dig in and rub the heck out of the muscle, but that’s missing a key component. That is why I try to hammer home the fact that you need to do your exercises with dynamic stretching.  Tightness is often just the manifestation of a physical symptom and not the underlying reason why you have that trigger point. Just to reiterate, exercises are key in creating a sustained change rather than putting that band aid on there just to help you feel good for a little bit.

Why Do You Want To Stretch

Another thing that you need to consider when picking the type of stretches that you will do is asking yourself why you want to stretch. Are you trying to increase your range of motion? If yes, you also have to ask what you need that increased range of motion for.

Static stretching is not generally going to reduce your propensity for injury. For my hip, stretching made it worse and created an injury because I went past the range of motion through my stretching and dancing. It actually put too much on the joint creating a lack of centration and eventual injury.

You need to know what your goal is in increasing your range of motion. Is it something specific that you need to gain access to by having an increased range of motion? These are important things to think about because we are trained to think that more flexibility is better, but in reality that’s not the case. It is time to unschool yourself to not think that way.

Remember the example of static stretching causes you to have a decrease of muscle strength? Do not do that if your goal is explosive power or strength gains.  Knowing why you want that increased range of motion and how it’s going to help you functionally is a good thing to think of to see what kind of stretching you need to do to get that. Knowing these will also help you understand if the stretching is necessary and if it’s going to be safe for your joint. Remember that flexibility by itself is not great for your joints because you want to be able to control it with strength.  This way it can give you proper mobility and provide a healthy place for your joint to be in.

Conclusion

These are the things I want to put out there for the dancers, gymnasts, yogis, and everyone else who does stretching. I hope this blog helped you understand how to keep it safe and healthy and how to work in that mid-range of motion to make it more of a helpful strength-building place to allow you to do the things that you want to.

If you have any questions, you can drop it in the comment section or you send me a message through Facebook or Instagram. I’d be happy to do another podcast about your questions. Also, if you want me to talk about something specific, let me know!

You can also check my TikTok account as I use the platform to educate viewers about movement, chiropractic education, yoga, pregnancy, and more!