Don’t kid yourself if you never stretch: it is only a matter of when you get injured, not if. In addition, if you are too tight in certain parts of your body, you are functioning below your real potential – remember that performance enhancement is the second very important reason to stretch: flexible muscles perform a lot better than tight muscles.
In order to improve flexibility, it’s important to first understand some of the science underpinning the principles of stretching. What is flexibility? It is important to highlight some points regarding flexibility. First, flexibility is joint specific. That is, you cannot say someone is flexible just because they can touch their toes. The same person may not even be able to reach around and scratch the small of his/her back because their shoulder has poor flexibility. Second, flexibility is sport specific. You would not expect a front row rugby forward to have the same flexibility as an Olympic gymnast, because it is not required for his sport. In fact, in a contact sport like rugby, being that flexible would be detrimental to his body.
Why is flexibility important?
Good flexibility allows the joints to improve their range of motion. For example, flexibility in the shoulder musculature allows a swimmer to ‘glide’ the arm through the water using shoulder elevation. This allows the joints to easily accommodate the desired joint angles without undue stress on the tissues around them. It therefore is essential for injury prevention.
Stretching also forms an integral part of rehabilitation programmes following injury. For example, it is accepted that a muscle tear will heal with scar tissue. This scar tissue tends to be functionally shorter and have more resistance to stretch than normal healthy muscle tissue. Therefore stretching is used at an appropriate time in the healing process to assist in lengthening this contracted scar tissue.
Good flexibility improves posture and ergonomics. Our bodies have a tendency to allow certain muscles to tighten up which will affect our posture. Flexibility, because it allows good range of motion, may improve motor performance and skill execution. Skill execution and reduced risk of injury will be greatly enhanced if the body has the flexibility necessary for that particular movement. Stretching allows faster body recovery, reducing post exercise muscle soreness as well as muscle spasm associated with exercise.
If you are not used to stretching, take it slowly and patiently. Getting used to new body feelings can take time but will certainly be very rewarding in the longer term. Here are a few suggested classes from our online library to help improve your range of motion:
The body is resilient, but a little pre-exercise stretching can make all the difference. Many modern trainers consider stretching to be essential. In fact, some experts believe stretching is beneficial no matter the intensity of the workout.
So, why exactly is stretching essential to your body? Does stretching prevent injury by itself? Let’s take a closer look at what makes stretching “work.” Then, we’ll give you a few tips to maximize your stretching.
The Benefits of Stretching
Many sports trainers, sports medicine practitioners and fitness organizations promote stretching, and for different reasons. While experts believe stretching benefits the body in different ways, most consider the practice to be healthy, overall, for any active individual.
Increased Range of Motion
By stretching, you can directly improve your performance. Lifting, bending and running get a little easier when you’ve prioritized your range of motion. Flexibility exercises loosen up your active muscles, freeing your body to achieve more positions.
Improved Circulation
A good stretch also increases blood flow to your muscles. Blood delivers nourishing nutrients, too, which promote long-term growth. Plus, it removes waste byproducts inside your muscle tissue.
Improved Posture
If you stretch often, you’ll stand straighter. Frequent stretching can also reduce the regular aches and pains which contribute to a less-than-ideal posture over time.
How Does Stretching Prevent Injury?
More studies have concluded that stretching mainly reduces injuries by increasing flexibility. While immobilization and a sedentary can cause long term injuries, range of motion exercises can protect the body.
This increased flexibility won’t prevent injuries by itself. In some cases, increased flexibility can hinder athletic performance. Runners, for example, can become too flexible before they compete. When this happens, they over accentuate their muscles—and their movements. This overuse, alone, can ruin an athlete’s form.
Active and Isolated Flexibility Exercises
These types of exercises maximize the positive effects of stretching. They move the joint, and muscle, gently to the point of tension. Then, the tension is released. This is repeated 10 times.
This type of flexibility practice, done before exercise, promotes healthy circulation and mobility alike. It also lubricates the targeted joint. These benefits may seem small, but they’re rather important. You can use stretching to reduce the chances of long term injury, similar to the way you’d use exercise.
Improving Problem Areas
If you have a good program which targets your body’s problem areas, you can improve your overall fitness performance. In general, quality performance reduces the chance of injury. When designing a flexibility program, sports medicine experts normally aim to improve low-flexibility areas.
Of course, every stretching routine is different. In most, stretching tight muscles seems to be enough. In others, the goal is to become as limber as possible. Again: Stretching alone won’t increase your body’s physical resilience. It merely lets you perform better, athletically.
The relationship between stretching and injury prevention is indeed obscure.. If you do stretch, consider using both static and dynamic stretches.
Static stretches involve holding a single position for about 30 seconds.
Dynamic stretches, or active stretches, practice the body’s range of motion.
At the end of the day, stretching might not be more than a fun habit. If it works for you, makes you feel limber and boosts your warmup comfort—then stretch away!
We all love our down times where we’re free to play golf with some mates on the weekend, play a casual game of tennis or heading down to the park to kick a footy with friends or family. Whatever we do in the little spare time we have, we do it because we love it. However when things go awry, it can really put a downer on our free time and our overall mindset.
For the majority of us working nine to five, five days a week, we spend a lot of time sitting or not moving at all. Let’s put things into perspective. There are 168 hours a weeks. If we think about how much time we sitting down to have meals, driving to and from work and sitting at a desk all day, those hours really begin to add up! By the end of the week when we’re ready to play our two hours of tennis after spending a majority of the week not moving, it might be a bit much to ask for our bodies to jump straight into sprinting across court and not expect something to give.
As a practitioner there have been many times where clients have asked why flexibility is important and why they need to work on it. The human body is very adaptable and in a way it is very good at cheating when it comes to keeping your body moving. By having that flexibility and mobility, our body is free to move without straining or forcing muscles to stretch beyond their capable range. This will prevent injuries and allow you to keep doing what you love.
Let’s take football for example where a client experiences back pain while kicking the ball. After a week of little movement, their hamstrings have stiffened up and shortened from all that sitting. As they go to kick the ball their lower back curls forward to bring their leg up as a way to create more movement. However if the compensation isn’t addressed, it could eventually lead to further back problems or a hamstring tear! All of this could be prevented with a little knowledge and time to look after you throughout the week.
So the next time you’re getting ready to play a couple of rounds of golf, kick the footy with mates or play that volley shot at the net. Take some time throughout the week to stretch and work on your mobility and your body will thank you for it. You’ll be more efficient, productive and be able to do a lot more!
Derek Thai – Elite Myotherapist
It is generally accepted that increasing the flexibility of a muscle-tendon unit promotes better performances and decreases the number of injuries. Stretching exercises are regularly included in warm-up and cooling-down exercises; however, contradictory findings have been reported in the literature. Several authors have suggested that stretching has a beneficial effect on injury prevention. In contrast, clinical evidence suggesting that stretching before exercise does not prevent injuries has also been reported. Apparently, no scientifically based prescription for stretching exercises exists and no conclusive statements can be made about the relationship of stretching and athletic injuries. Stretching recommendations are clouded by misconceptions and conflicting research reports. We believe that part of these contradictions can be explained by considering the type of sports activity in which an individual is participating. Sports involving bouncing and jumping activities with a high intensity of stretch-shortening cycles (SSCs) [e.g. soccer and football] require a muscle-tendon unit that is compliant enough to store and release the high amount of elastic energy that benefits performance in such sports. If the participants of these sports have an insufficient compliant muscle-tendon unit, the demands in energy absorption and release may rapidly exceed the capacity of the muscle-tendon unit. This may lead to an increased risk for injury of this structure. Consequently, the rationale for injury prevention in these sports is to increase the compliance of the muscle-tendon unit. Recent studies have shown that stretching programmes can significantly influence the viscosity of the tendon and make it significantly more compliant, and when a sport demands SSCs of high intensity, stretching may be important for injury prevention. This conjecture is in agreement with the available scientific clinical evidence from these types of sports activities. In contrast, when the type of sports activity contains low-intensity, or limited SSCs (e.g. jogging, cycling and swimming) there is no need for a very compliant muscle-tendon unit since most of its power generation is a consequence of active (contractile) muscle work that needs to be directly transferred (by the tendon) to the articular system to generate motion. Therefore, stretching (and thus making the tendon more compliant) may not be advantageous. This conjecture is supported by the literature, where strong evidence exists that stretching has no beneficial effect on injury prevention in these sports. If this point of view is used when examining research findings concerning stretching and injuries, the reasons for the contrasting findings in the literature are in many instances resolved.