You’re about to begin your workout, and you heard that stretching exercises are good for you. So you get into some stretch that you’ve seen some other person do, and you do the same thing. Good idea… not.
You see, there are way more people exercising wrong, than right. And that includes personal trainers.
So in this article, you’re going to learn:
- How long you should be stretching for (how long to hold your stretches)
- When you shouldn’t be doing stretching exercises
- Why your constant stretching doesn’t make your tightness go away (permanently, anyway)
- Why lengthening a muscle is impossible anyway
What we won’t cover here is what stretches to do. As you know from my articles by now, the answer is much more complex than just saying “do these stretches.”
Let’s get started.
How Long You Should be Stretching
There’s a lot of debate on how long you should stretch for. Some say 15 seconds, others say 30 seconds, and yet, others say 2 minutes. Some go as far as to say 15 minutes per stretch or more.
The truth is that assigning time to a stretch is completely arbitrary. Why? Because different people will be “stretched out” after different durations. So just as with any other training variable, your stretching duration should be individualized.
So how do you figure out how long you should be holding your stretching exercises?
Pavel Tsatsouline’s answer makes the most sense to me. He’s the author of a pair of excellent books on stretching, Relax Into Stretch and Super Joints. Or, if you prefer to listen to Pavel explain the rationale, you can do so on Tim Ferriss’s podcast, here.
Original source: here.
Here is the explanation: when you stretch a muscle, you’re really going after the nervous system. It’s really the nervous system that controls muscle length. Do you notice how when you just get into a stretching position, you feel the stretch? But after holding it for a certain period of time, that stretching sensation goes away? Did the muscle get longer? No. But the nervous system did relax.
Within your muscles, you have a neurological reflex called the “stretch reflex.” It protects you from “unfamiliar territory.” What’s unfamiliar territory? Unusual ranges of motion. So if you tried to do the splits, never having done them before, you’ll feel a very big pull in your inner thigh muscles. It’ll be uncomfortable enough to get you to want to bring your legs back to a comfortable position. But if you only go to the point of very mild discomfort (maybe a 3 or a 4 on a 0-10 scale), and hold it there for a while, that stretching sensation will dissipate (so that sensation of a 3 or 4 will diminish to a 1 or a 0). That will calm down the nervous system, and make a greater range of motion available to you.
So the short answer to the question of “how long should you hold a stretch for?” is “until you don’t feel the stretch any longer.”
Designer: Kalen Schellenberg
When You Shouldn’t be Doing Stretching Exercises
Some people shouldn’t be stretching, period. What is the goal of stretching? Improved flexibility. Just as with anything, there’s a right amount of flexibility. You can have too little, and you can have too much.
If you’re the person with too little flexibility, stretching will be beneficial for you. But if you’re the person with too much flexibility, stretching will actually raise your risk of injury.
I’m sure at this point, some of you are thinking “I feel stiff all the time. I must have too little flexibility.” Frequently, people who feel the tightest are actually the ones with the most flexibility. In fact, they have so much flexibility that there’s not enough stiffness to provide stability to a joint. Not good. That puts you at risk for dislocations, and other joint issues.
Whether you stretch or not should be based on range of motion testing. Not on how you feel. Because remember this: feelings lie.
The classic test we use with our clients to determine if they have too much flexibility is the “Beighton Test for Hypermobility.” You can do it on yourself, but checking out the procedure here.
The higher you score, the less stretching exercises you should be doing. Yes, even if you feel tight all the time (once again: feelings lie). The lower you score, the more stretching exercises you should be doing.
This brings me to my next point:
Why Your Constant Stretching Isn’t Making Your Tightness Go Away (Permanently, Anyway)
I know. You feel tight all the time. So you feel the need to stretch. The reason that you feel tight all the time is not because your muscles are tight or short. The reason you feel tight is because your muscles are weak (yeah, I said it). I’ll give you an example. Two of the most commonly “tight” muscles are the hamstrings (backs of the thighs), and lower back. People feel good when they stretch those muscles. But they only feel good for a few minutes, to a few hours. It doesn’t make that tight feeling go away permanently.
So what’s with the constant feeling of tightness? One of the reasons for that is that the muscles that feel tight are just working overtime, to compensate for other muscles that are not working hard enough. In the case of the hamstring and lower back tightness, the answer to getting rid of that feeling of tightness is often to strengthen the glutes (the butt muscles), and get them to contract at the right time. Then, the hamstrings and lower back won’t have to compensate for your lazy butt (haha).
But again, that’s just one possible reason for tightness. There are others. If you want to figure out your reason for tightness, you can apply to work with us by filling out the form on this page.
Why Lengthening a Muscle is Impossible Anyway
Ask someone (even most personal trainers) why they are doing stretching exercises, and they’ll tell you “I want to lengthen my muscles.” Ha! Uneducated punks.
The truth is that it is impossible to lengthen a muscle. The length of your muscles is predetermined at birth. And the length of the muscle is identical from when you reach your full adult size to the day you die. So why do we get stiffer as we age? A number of reasons, like your nervous system, as I mentioned earlier, the fascia gets tighter, the joint structure may change slightly. But the only thing that won’t change is the muscle length.
You see, every muscle has 2 attachments to bones (for the geeks, these are called the “origin” and “insertion”). Muscles connect to bones through tendons. Here’s a picture to help you visualize. See the white lines at the ends of the muscle? Those are tendons.
And where tendons attach to your bone doesn’t change. To lengthen a muscle, you would literally need to take the tendon off the bone, and reattach it to a different part of the bone. You can’t do that.
And if all of this is just too complex for you, and you just want the shortcut (in other words, get straight to the point as it applies to your body), apply to work with us by filling out this form.
