Today we have a guest post from author Alex Hutchinson. Alex writes a
monthly column in Runner’s World (they also host his excellent Sweat Science blog) and is a Senior Editor at Canadian Running magazine. You can find more on Alex at the bottom of this post.
As Alex mentions below, he recently published a fantastic book which has a rather large section on the health benefits of stretching (or lack thereof). As a longtime skeptic of stretching myself, I was very excited when he agreed to summarize the research evidence in a guest post. Enjoy the post!
I guess I should start by stating my bias: I don’t like stretching.
For over a decade, I stretched every day, usually twice a day – but I
never enjoyed it. I still try to be as impartial as possible in
analyzing the evidence for and against stretching, but I figure you have
the right to know that I’m a stretching skeptic!
So what is this evidence I refer to? Over the past decade or so, there has been a complete change in how coaches and exercise scientists view stretching. It’s the biggest change in elite training that I’m aware of during that time, and these days it’s the biggest gap between elite athletes and the average person at the gym. I devote an entire chapter to the topic in my recent science-of-exercise book, Which Comes First, Cardio or Weights?, and I’m going to draw on that to present a few highlights of the recent research.
1. Does stretching help you avoid injury during exercise?
This is very difficult to “prove” one way or the other, because every person and every injury is unique. Still, a 2004 systematic review that analyzed 361 studies concluded that “stretching was not significantly associated with a reduction in total injuries.” Other reviews have reached similar conclusions. The early studies that suggested stretching would help always included stretching as part of a warm-up; it now appears that a warm-up (e.g. five minutes of gentle jogging) is important but stretching isn’t.
2. Does stretching help you avoid soreness after exercise?
No. A 2011 Cochrane review of 12 randomized studies with more than 2,000 subjects in total concluded that “muscle stretching, whether conducted before, after, or before and after exercise, does not produce clinically important reductions in delayed-onset muscle soreness.” This is not a surprise: post-exercise soreness is thought to result from microscopic damage to muscle fibres; you can’t “undamage” the muscles by stretching them.
by Travis Saunders, Plos Blogs | Read more:
As Alex mentions below, he recently published a fantastic book which has a rather large section on the health benefits of stretching (or lack thereof). As a longtime skeptic of stretching myself, I was very excited when he agreed to summarize the research evidence in a guest post. Enjoy the post!
I guess I should start by stating my bias: I don’t like stretching.
For over a decade, I stretched every day, usually twice a day – but I
never enjoyed it. I still try to be as impartial as possible in
analyzing the evidence for and against stretching, but I figure you have
the right to know that I’m a stretching skeptic!So what is this evidence I refer to? Over the past decade or so, there has been a complete change in how coaches and exercise scientists view stretching. It’s the biggest change in elite training that I’m aware of during that time, and these days it’s the biggest gap between elite athletes and the average person at the gym. I devote an entire chapter to the topic in my recent science-of-exercise book, Which Comes First, Cardio or Weights?, and I’m going to draw on that to present a few highlights of the recent research.
1. Does stretching help you avoid injury during exercise?
This is very difficult to “prove” one way or the other, because every person and every injury is unique. Still, a 2004 systematic review that analyzed 361 studies concluded that “stretching was not significantly associated with a reduction in total injuries.” Other reviews have reached similar conclusions. The early studies that suggested stretching would help always included stretching as part of a warm-up; it now appears that a warm-up (e.g. five minutes of gentle jogging) is important but stretching isn’t.
2. Does stretching help you avoid soreness after exercise?
No. A 2011 Cochrane review of 12 randomized studies with more than 2,000 subjects in total concluded that “muscle stretching, whether conducted before, after, or before and after exercise, does not produce clinically important reductions in delayed-onset muscle soreness.” This is not a surprise: post-exercise soreness is thought to result from microscopic damage to muscle fibres; you can’t “undamage” the muscles by stretching them.
by Travis Saunders, Plos Blogs | Read more:
