45. The Skinny on Stretching.

As anyone who’s ever been to an exercise class will tell you, it’s vital to stretch before and after jumping around or all manner of dreadful things will happen to you!

But is that really true?

Does stretching really bring a whole host of benefits?

And if stretching is the panacea for all ills, does that make all stretching, good stretching?

Join our duo to find out if it really is worth hanging around at the end of that class to stretch out or if honestly, you could use that 5 minutes to enhance your life in other ways!

Episode Resources:

Check out thesearticles for more great information on the science of stretching and if you want to check your understanding of dynamic vs. static stretching then look no further than this resource.

Here are thoughts from the Mayo clinic and a physiotherapist (Physical Therapist in the US) as to why static stretching may be best avoided pre-exercise.

Does science agree with our physiotherapist’s thoughts? Perhaps surprisingly, it turns out that there’s not really much evidence that static stretching increases risk of injury but it does appear to reduce strength and power, at least temporarily.

On the other hand, here’s a weighty, but interesting discussion of why some static stretching pre-exercise might be okay in some circumstances.

Whilst dynamic stretching does seem to have benefits for range of motion, the evidence to say it reduces injury is not very strong - more work is needed in this field.

Not all dynamic stretching is necessarily good, data suggests avoiding ballistic i.e bouncing stretches, instead, here are a few suggestions of ones to try.

But how about this rather positive note to end on, what about trying yoga? This, admittedly small study, showed increased testosterone and decreased cortisol (a marker of stress levels) levels after a yoga class! Forget dry January and consider trying flexible February instead!