Many people feel tight some place in their body. So logically, we as PTs often get asked all sorts of questions about stretching. How do I stretch? How much should I stretch? When should I stretch? What muscles are the most important to stretch?
Who knew there would be so many questions about stretching! Why wouldn’t there be though? We don’t typically learn about all these things in high school gym class.
Here we are to help!
First, every one may not need to stretch.
Yes, you read that correctly. Everyone may not need to stretch.
Each person’s body is different and requires different things to help keep it mobile and feeling good.
There are some people who are naturally inflexible. They’ve been inflexible since they were in diapers. Just kidding, but seriously, these people know they have not been flexible since a young age.
These are the individuals that likely need to stretch. (The next post will give details to these people).
There are other people who are naturally extremely flexible. When these people were young, they were able to put their foot behind their heads and easily become a pretzel. These people are tricky though because as they age their flexibility may turn into tightness.
One would naturally think that these people must need stretching now since they once were flexible but are now inflexible. Not necessarily! The loss of range of motion can purely be because their joints aren’t being lubricated like they once were. How many people sit at a desk all day and don’t do much movement? When we were kids, recess was built into our day as a time to move and climb and explore. No wonder we were so mobile!
So, one part of the solution is purely getting moving more. The other piece of the puzzle is these people’s muscles may be tightening around a joint to help provide stability in response to lack of strength and muscle coordination. In this case, these people can stretch and stretch and stretch, but the tightness persists or even worse the muscle has an injury.
For this type of person, static prolonged holds for stretching may not be the best fit.
What is recommended though is doing exercises through a full range of motion to lengthen the muscle and then shorten it.
This provides the muscle the capability to lengthen under tension which creates long lasting changes.
This helps the body to feel safe as you are actively lengthening your muscle. Instead of the muscle reacting with more tension and tightness like static stretching may do, the muscle is able to relax and lengthen.
This type of lengthening of the muscle is not only good for the flexible people, but also the inflexible people and all of those who are in-between.
So, for the mobility exercises that will help create length (aka more flexibility) here are the answers to the questions above:
How long should you do these exercises? Start with higher repetitions with these exercises at first to help re-educate the muscle (let’s say 15 reps) and then you can move to adding resistance with lower repetitions (enough resistance for around 5-6 reps).
How many sets? 2-3 sets of these exercises to help make changes.
When to do these exercises/stretches? During a warm-up prior to exercising is best.
What muscles are the most important? We often see the back of the hips (gluteal muscles) and quads as the tightest so it’s often beneficial to start there.
Below are some examples of creating this length while under tension:
Bulgarian split squats (creates flexibility/length through the quad of the leg on the bench and glutes of the standing leg): Place one leg behind you on a raised surface such as a bench and the standing leg is firmly on the floor in front. Your hips should be facing forward. Make sure they are not rotated back towards the leg that is on the bench. Bend your knee of the front leg to lower down towards the floor. Almost all of your weight should be on the front leg. Keep your hips level so that one does not drop to the floor. Then press up through that leg (heel and toes) to return to standing.
Lunge hip rotations (creates flexibility/length through the glutes): Stand with legs staggered around hip-width apart. The weight should be mostly through the front leg. Place your hands on your hips to monitor motion and then rotate your pelvis to the right if the front leg is the right leg. This will drop your left hip down some towards the floor and bring it forwards. Make sure you are not rotating through the upper body. Then press through the right leg to push your pelvis to rotate to the left. Repeat 15x then switch to the left leg.
Please see the attached links to view videos of these exercises: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGuiB6gZg1M
In our next post, we will talk about static stretching that the naturally inflexible people may benefit from: