It’s easy to get overwhelmed with exercise and fitness. Everything (that can be sold) is the answer to everything (that people want).
Should you get stronger? Should you specialize in a sport? Should you buy home gym equipment? Should you join a club team? Should you stretch?
Okay, yes, get stronger, who knows about that other crap, and no, athletes shouldn’t stretch…
Except when they should.
It’s not enough to think double here. There are reasons to stretch and there are reasons not to stretch. Binary thinking – is this good or bad, is this useful or not – is a waste of our incredible brains. Think in 3D with me for a moment:
- working a desk job involves hours in a static, supported, “ergonomic” position
- powerlifting involves seconds of maximum voluntary contraction in precisely defined ranges of motion
- weightlifting involves fractions of seconds of explosive effort near absolute end ranges of flexion & extension at all joints
- rugby demands continuously evolving opposing forces across all ranges of motion for all joints
Let’s arbitrarily call the desk worker an athlete for a moment and consider: which athlete needs to stretch?
Stretching is simply isometric strength training. Get to a position, hold for a while, cyclically create and release tension, move on to another position. Done consistently, stretching demands that tissues adapt. Tendons and their signaling organs learn the desired end-range and load profile of the position, then react to allow more access to that position.
So what are you stretching for?
Do you need a static end range in your sport that you cannot access right now? Or is your range of motion restrained by inflammation from an injury? Or is your range of motion impeded by adaptations to habitual posture (aka you’re tight)?
Mobility exercises can be joint capsule-focused or tissue sliding-focused in the micro view or movement-focused in the macro view. Attempt motion from position A to position B, apply a little intervention, repeat the motion. Done consistently, mobility work demands that tissues and motor patterns adapt.
So, again, what are you mobilizing for?
Do you need a specific degree of extension around a joint in your sport that you cannot control right now? Or is your fluidity of motion restrained by scarring from an injury? Or is your freedom of motion impeded by adaptations to habitual posture (aka you’re immobile)?
The “athlete” that most needs stretching and mobility is the desk worker. Chronic poor posture made them tight. Continuous “ergonomic” support made them immobile.
The athlete with a history of tissue trauma (muscle pulls, severe cramps, tendon tears) needs stretching and mobility, too. Their soft tissues developed adhesions that made them sticky. Their joints developed calcium deposits that limited their end range.
But the athlete whose sport demands static and dynamic stability in a broad range of joint angles, in an ideal world, does not need to stretch. They just need to play their sport and recover from playing their sport. The sport tells the body how to be. Form follows function.
But even that argument falls apart, because you’re not an athlete in some sort of sports performance vacuum. You probably are not a professional. You probably do not have a recovery team available on demand, including a massage therapist and chiropractor and physical therapist and psychologist.
So, assuming you have a job, you have to consider your movement habits. Do you sit in a car or on a train to commute? Do you sit or stand in one place for work? Do you repeat the same movement all day?
Work has an impact on your body.
Assuming you’ve ever been injured, you have to consider your rehab routines. Did you massage the tissue multiple times per day? Did you challenge your range of motion multiple times per day? Did you abandon braces and sleeves and wraps as early as possible while returning to training? Did you slowly ramp your training volume back up?
Injury had an impact on your body.
Assuming you’re an amateur in your sport, even if it’s the most well-balanced, dynamic, high-performance sport in the world, you have to consider your training behaviors. Do you train most days? Do you warm up in a way specific to your sport’s demands? Do you aggressively practice your weakest skills every day? Do you stop training sessions before your coordination or decision-making is impaired? Do you move sport-like on your rest days? Do you even take rest days?
Training and playing have an impact on your body.
So you need stretching and mobility to manage that impact. You need to prevent that impact from impeding your sport performance.
Should athletes stretch?
Ideally, no. You just challenge your body with intense, dynamic, non-repetitive, large range-of-motion demands frequently and completely avoid injury.
But…for the rest of us…take Vladimir Janda’s advice: “Stretch what is shortening, then strengthen what is weakening” and only build endurance in coordinated patterns.
Since, as an athlete, you’re also a person likely to have a desk job and you’re likely to have been injured before, you should probably stretch and mobilize. But limit the time you spend on it to the highest return areas: your tight stuff (hip flexors, shoulders) and your overused stuff (calves, quads, pecs).
Spend the rest of your time moving in a dynamic way and challenging your range of motion as it applies to your sport.
Stretching is neither good nor bad. Mobility work is neither good nor bad. Rather, just like the premise of being “too strong,” pursuing flexibility and mobility comes with a time and energy cost – time and energy that might be better applied to just playing your sport or taking a nap.
Those are two things that are hard to sell, easy to understand, and that I think every athlete *should* do.