By Will Carlin
In 1968, Bob Anderson was 23 years old. Born in Fullerton, California, he was an active child who had put on weight while studying in college. He decided to start a personal physical fitness program. After changing his diet, eating less, running and cycling, his weight went from 190 to 135 pounds.
Fairly fit, he went to a conditioning class where the instructor started the class with some stretching. Sitting on the ground in a straight-legged position, Anderson found that he could not reach much past his knees. Surprised to discover how tight he was, he decided to do something about it; he started stretching.
A number of years later, Anderson had developed a method of stretching that he felt could be taught, and so he did. People responded and word got out about his guru of stretching. Before long, he was teaching his technique to professional and college teams and to other amateur athletes.
In 1975, Anderson and his wife, Jean, self-published perhaps the first book devoted to the practice. Simply titled Stretching, the book was available only by mail. But it found its audience. Eventually selling well over 3 million copies, the book is partially responsible for the stretching craze that hit the world.
Stretching is now routine for most amateur and professional athletes; if you were to go to a weekend squash tournament, you would see players getting ready for matches by leaning against walls, putting their legs up on rails or benches, or even sitting on the ground in the same kind of stretch that Anderson did so many years ago.
Stretching feels good. Yes, there sometimes is pain when you try to extend a stretch just a bit further, but it is relaxing and it seems to help. Along with feeling good, there are many touted benefits of stretching. including better posture, muscle recovery, and—most notably—injury prevention.
It seems intuitive, doesn’t it? If your muscle is more flexible—more elastic—wouldn’t it make sense that in a sport where sudden movement and long lunges to the front and to the sides is the norm your muscle would be less likely to get pulled, to get torn or to snap?
As with any significant claim, however, there are always those who want proof. And despite many studies, the effectiveness of stretching has been notoriously hard to prove—in fact, a spate of recent articles and reports say that stretching might actually be harmful to athletes.
Gretchen Reynolds, in her recent New York Times piece “Stretching: The Truth” says: “Researchers now believe that some of the more entrenched elements of many athletes’ warm-up regimens are not only a waste of time but actually bad for you. 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.”
There are a number of studies that back her up. Reynolds cites a University of Nevada Las Vegas study that found that leg muscles were able to generate less force after static stretching than they did after not stretching at all, and there are a number of other studies that show static stretching can decrease muscle strength as much as 30 percent for up to 20 minutes after stretching. Probably not the best way to start a squash match.
But what about injuries? Dr. Stephen B. Thacker, director of the epidemiology program office at the Centers for Disease Control, was quoted as saying that stiffness isn’t all bad; in fact, a certain degree of inflexibility seems to help prevent joint injury and muscle tears. Knee and ankle injuries in squash, for example, often occur during a quick change of direction.
“The less stiffness you have in those sorts of situations, the more likely you are to tear something,” Dr. Thacker said. “All your body weight is going in one direction at a certain momentum and a certain speed. The torque on the [joint] as it tries to change direction puts stress on the ligament, and the overly flexible [joint] cannot handle the counterthrust.”
Still, there is no question that in squash the lower you can lunge and further you can stretch, the better your ability to retrieve, so shouldn’t that improve through stretching?
There are two answers: first, there is another study by the CDC showing that daily stretching both increases range of motion and increases tissue strength (note that the world ‘daily’ is italicized; even stretching three times a week does not have the same impact); second, there is general consensus that every athlete should be striving to have appropriate range of motion for their sport and to make sure not to lose range of motion either through strenuous training or age or both.
Interestingly, the most celebrated flexibility gurus, Phil and Jim Wharton, agree with all the studies. The key, they say, is to stop overworking your muscles and, instead, focus on low-impact moves that warm them up while preserving their elasticity. “A muscle is like a rubber band,” explains Jim Wharton. “Stretching it in any forced position is going to weaken it.” Instead, the Whartons concentrate on short, isolated movements that are held for only a couple of seconds. “It’s just enough to get the blood flowing before activity and then flush out the waste products afterward,” he says.
Static stretching is not entirely out of vogue, however. Dr. Gloria Beim, an orthopedic surgeon in Crested Butte, Colorado, who is the team doctor for the US track cycling team, said that she finds that the increased elasticity and flexibility that stretching promotes seems to help athletes recovering from injuries.
“Muscle strain and injury can create chronic scarring or inflammatory problems that benefit considerably from stretching before and after exercise, particularly through the rehab phase,” Dr. Beim said.
Summing it all up, the popular consensus is that the type of stretching you do should be dictated by when you do it. Your warm up should be used to, well, get warm—do some aerobic activity and the types of dynamic stretching suggested by Phil and Jim Wharton. After exercise, you should do a combination of dynamic and static stretching to maintain or slightly increase your range of motion.
The nice thing is that once you get into it, it really does feel pretty good, and that’s no stretch.
