Static Stretching Exercise Myths, Mobility and how Kelly Starrett is to blame
Out of all the crazy fitness routines and systems that come and go, stretching is probably one of the few tidbits hijacked by the fitness industry that you’ve explored naturally* over the years. We can all relate to waking up and stretching our arms overhead, or lengthening through our back and hips and whatnots after a long drive.
These natural explorations of our body are things we do automatically. That is, until you were told to do it a certain way, or not do it at all, depending on your exposure to the mobility vs flexibility debacle. If your exposure to this ongoing and uninformed debate is limited, then heads up-flexibility has been given a bad rap by many an otherwise reputable therapist/practitioner, with flocks of mimicking fit pros, devoid of critical thinking, following suit.
Even the pinnacle of journalism, the New York Times, had this to say; “The old presumption that holding a stretch for 20 to 30 seconds, known as static stretching, primes muscles for a workout is dead wrong. It actually weakens them. “
But here’s the thing.
We need to decide where we want to get our science based facts from. With everything that’s going on in the world right now, this is even more important than ever. I can tell you for certain, that the place to go isn’t a journalist who’s gleamed over the title, or mayyyyybe glanced at the abstract of a research paper, and it sure in heck isn’t the personal trainer, who subsequently browsed the article that the lazy journalist wrote, whilst quickly downing a cup of BCAA’s.
This vilification of stretching that has polluted the fitness industry and sports over the last few years, came out of papers that looked at the impact of stretching on sports performance. The most commonly referred to papers showed that stretching before jumping decreased jump height. This has been extrapolated to say that stretching reduces performance.
Those few enquiring minds that went on to read the research, would have found that the protocols often involved participants holding stretches for up to 2 minutes, and performing the jumping activities immediately after the stretching routine.
Is this real life? How many times would you rock up to training stretch for 2 minutes and jump up and run, jump etc as hard as you could??
As it turns out, a 2012 systematic review, one of the stronger empirical weapons of getting answers, showed that stretching for durations under 60 seconds had no detrimental impact on performance, and the researchers even went on to note that pre-activity stretching may improve range of motion and muscle strain injury risk. Can I add this paper is nearly 10 years old? Yet for some reason, these results have been ignored, and so many trainers have wiped out stretching from their programming.
I’m not entirely sure why this is the case. I feel that early on in the piece, trainers would tell clients about their apparent newfound discoveries on how they shouldn’t stretch, and it served as a way to impress clients on something that they previously believed was good for them. Given the delay (or complete lack of transmission) between information from research, to filtering down to the general public, I’m sure there are plenty of trainers still impressing on new clientele with their fun facts.
The whole shebang wasn’t helped much when Kelly Starret came out with a book called The Supple Leopard, which touted the message that stretching sucked and we should do “mobility” work instead…as he proceeded to amaze us with a book of, would you believe , stretches….hashtag mobility.
So 2 things. First, ask questions, and be proactive about who you get your info from.
And secondly, if there is potential benefit from stretching before you train, then do so. You might just improve your performance as a result.
*Note: obviously our natural tendency to stretch is great, but the benefit we receive from it can be improved beyond our underlying instincts, and can be improved on with eduction and implementation of research, mixed with experimentation of anecdotal information.