The Mysteries of Stretching

Stretching is either bad for you, good for you, or has no effect on you whatsoever. I can say with confidence that it is definitely one of the above. The real answer is a little more nuanced and, well, dependent on a host of factors.

In the past, it was generally well accepted that stretching was important for preparing the body for more vigorous work and would improve performance. More recently, stretching took its turn as a punching bag after some research showed decreases in power output after stretching. There were some methodological issues with these studies, but it didn’t stop the mainstream media from publishing some eye-catching headlines.

Here’s our take. Stretching is yet another tool in our exercise toolkit. Doing it 3x/week for 15 minutes is unlikely to make a big difference in your flexibility. It’s probably also not going to be extremely helpful for injury prevention when used in isolation. These things aside, we have noted time and again that we can use a stretch to increase range of motion, at least temporarily. Whether this is due to an actual change in the soft tissues or just due to a greater tolerance by the nervous system to the stretch, we cannot definitively say. What we can say, however, is that movement improves our ability to move. Stretching is one way that we move, but it is rarely not followed up with higher level movements involving more force, speed, range, or all of the above, giving the entire neuromuscular system a stimulus.