‘Stretching is essential for injury prevention’
‘Stretching is a waste of time, it’s strength training that counts’
‘Stretching is useless unless you hold each stretch for 90 seconds’…
Heard them all? Me too.
The truth is that we’re all unique and what works for one person might not work for another. Large scale studies aren’t particularly helpful for looking at things like the effectiveness of stretching when it comes to injury prevention and rehab. Partly as there’s so many variables, and partly because a study could find that 20 out of 100 people get no benefit from stretching yet still conclude that it’s helpful for most people. If you’re one of those 20 the ‘evidence’ is meaningless.
Having said all this I do stretch, but I base my routine more on my personal experience and working knowledge of human anatomy than on the results of the latest studies . Dynamic stretching before intense exercise makes perfect sense, I want to warm up and stimulate blood flow to tendons that have been static and possibly held in a chronically shortened position from hours of me sitting on them (in itself restricting their blood supply). I also favour long static stretches post exercise in order to help with the bodies natural recovery phase (and hopefully minimise the post exercise soreness).
But for me the most important thing is little and often. Regardless of whether stretching is hugely beneficial, I can say with certainty being static for long periods of time is hugely damaging. When I talk about stretching I’m not aiming to stretch the muscles to the point of intense pain I just want to gently stimulate the muscles and tendons to remind my body how they are supposed to move, stimulate blood flow and move the joints to their full range of movement. For this reason I believe gentle stretching can also be really helpful during the injury recovery phase, it may sound counterintuitive to stretch a strained muscle or tendon but gentle stretching can help to stimulate blood flow, speed up recovery and strengthen the tissue.
On balance, I believe regular stretching of the muscles, tendons and joints is a completely natural thing (cat’s do it), and should be part of everyone’s daily routine but it shouldn’t be a competition (how far you can stretch or how long you can hold it) and as much as anything it’s about trying to correct the negative effects of our sedentary lifestyle rather than being a magic cure.