My life is fairly simple. I wake up, eat breakfast, go to the gym, go home and sleep.
Boring?
Yes
Effective?
Depends on who you ask.
I bring up my boring life because at this point, I have loaded thousands of people and have written thousands of programs. With a little bit of academia and a whole lot of practical observations, I have noticed a few things over the years.
The impetus of this article is not to vilify a certain modality.
I think the best course of action is having a mixture of actions which will give you a more fine tuned result.
Flexibility vs mobility
Whenever we do anything. We have to think…what is the point? Do my actions derive a benefit?
Will this action improve my longevity or athletic performance?
If we can answer yes, then we do it.
Flexibility : Typically defined as the available range of motion at a specific joint.
Mobility: The usable range of motion per person. Or in other words, the ability to get in and out of desired positions.
Another way to look at flexibility is your passive range of motion and mobility being more active range of motion.
Demand on tissues
For tissues to adapt to static stretching, you need to practice for a long time. Some studies say up to 30 minutes per day to derive a specific result.
Our younger athletes (especially females) have more lax joints. Which means their growth plates have not closed so their range of motion is sometimes scary. For us adults, it seems that we react to stretching much slower.
We see this typically in our younger female population. Hypermobility is very common and adding static stretching to their regimen will be counter productive. Instead, we work on stabilizing their joints.
We cannot over look the things we cannot see. There are structural or congenial abnormalities in a lot of people. So…no matter how much stretching we do, we cannot achieve a greater range of motion without some surgical intervention.
Should I stretch?
Depends.
It depends on what your goals are.
If you have the flexibility to live your life comfortably and you stay relatively injury free…then you’re set. But…if you like to practice things like yoga and you derive joy from said activity, then keep doing it!
If you have a hard time getting into every day positions then stretching can be beneficial for you. It just takes time and patience. We coach clients to do stretches at home during their free time when they can devote a decent chunk of time to stretching.
If you have good range of motion but cannot get into good positions, then mobility is for you. We use several external loading techniques to help us out with this. To make it simple, you can put joint into a range of motion that you would normally not be able to get into and with the help with a light external load, you can cement that range with developing some muscle tension.
Developing that agonist/antagonist muscle tension can help you access that range of motion later on.
We use positional breathing and certain core exercises to help decrease that resting neural tone in the muscles as well.
Lastly, simple joint mobilizations, foam rolling, trigger point and PNF stretching will help too.
In closing, haphazardly stretching everything at all times is not good use of time nor is it beneficial. We have to look at the individual, their training history, goals and how they currently move. And we have to remember that some people will have structural limitations so no matter how much you stretch.
No matter how much you stretch…nothing will happen.
However, if you enjoy stretching and it makes you happy…do it!
If you need help deciding what is best for your fitness journey, make sure you click here https://getjdfit.com/free-intr
