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How long and how often should you stretch

Clem Duranseaud

Maybe you like relaxing, or maybe you're tighter than Trudeau's federal budget post COVID. Either way, stretching out and giving your tight muscles can help you feel more relax and loosened up.


Passive stretching is the classic stretch-and-don't-move-while-it-hurts approach to stretching. In this post we will see what results we can expect from this technique and how to incorporate it into our routines.




A few terms to understand


Let's go three concepts to understand before we dive in.


ROM: stands for Range Of Motion. This is how far you can move.


Mobility is your muscle active range of motion. Imagine you are lying down on your back and I ask you to lift your leg up and reach back with your foot towards your shoulder. Wherever you get your leg to, that is mobility. It's how far you can willingly move.


Flexibility is your muscles passive range of motion. If I were to grab your leg and push it back more, it would probably go back further. It might not feel great, but it would go up. Flexibility is how far you can involuntarily move.


Controlling every aspect of your movements, so that your flexibility and mobility are almost the same should be a goal of any physical training program. Owning every part of your movements is important.


Passive vs Dynamic stretching


Passive stretching is when you stay still, go to where you feel discomfort and let gravity pull you further into the stretch. It's the classic style of stretching.


Dynamic stretch is when movement is involved. This style covers a wide range of techniques, but to get the idea, just picture yourself doing leg swings or arm rotations.


Active stretching involves using your muscles to pull yourself further into a stretch.


We're going to focus on passive stretching in this article.


A lot of fitness ideologies will make bold assertion against passive stretching. I think some of the negativity is over exaggerated.


The main criticism of passive stretching is that it doesn't effectively teach your body how to utilize the newly acquired range of motion.


I'm aligned with this claim. Passive stretching essentially increases your tolerance to stretching.



Your brain controls how far your muscles stretch. That is a safety mechanism. If your brain doesn't think it's safe for your to go further into a stretch it makes the muscles all tight.


Your brain knows exactly how stretched or contracted your muscles are thanks to these tiny things call muscle spindles.


When we do passive stretching, we are just making those muscle spindles tell the brain it is safe to go a little further.


In order to make lasting changes to your flexibility, you need to consistently stretch that way for weeks. Simply stretching for one session and hoping it will magically make you move differently is a misplaced hope.


Should you even bother with passive stretching?


One of the main arguments against stretching is it's time consuming nature and it's actual benefits. Learning to exercise with proper form should give you enough flexibility and is time better spent in a lot of people's opinion.


Regardless of available time in one's day, passive stretching has another huge benefit in my opinion: it helps you relax. As we will see in the next section, breathing is important when we stretch. This, combined with the fact that stretching can help you muscles feel less sore, is a great relaxing combo.


Now lets take a look on how often should your be stretching, and how long should you hold each stretch for?



How long should you stretch for


Like any physical adaptations, frequency is going to matter a lot. The more you something, be it stretch, lift weights, run, the better your body will be at it.


To improve flexibility, doing 3-4 stretching sessions per week is a great start.


Holding stretches anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes will help you increase your flexibility. The longer the better, but I know there are limitations. We all have busy lives and I know it's not realistic to hold each stretches for 10 minutes when we also have to make time for our workouts, work, kids friends and life.


Controlling your breathing while you stretch will help. Exhaling influences your parasympathetic nervous system which helps your relax. Long, controlled exhales will help your reach further in your stretches.


If you stretch too hard and cannot control your breathing, this will increase your sympathetic nervous system which is your fight or flight response. Not productive during a stretching session.


A controlled breath cycle typically lasts anywhere from 8-15 seconds, with a 3-5 seconds inhale through your nose and a 4-10 seconds exhales our of your mouth or nose.


Stretching your muscles for two minutes will allow you to take many deep breaths and to really work on increasing your passive range of motion.


Full body stretch routine


The following stretches target all the major muscle groups in your body. Pick and choose which one you want to focus on.


Lower body

Hamstring stretch


There are two options I like to do here. With the back leg tucked in or stretched out. The second option if tougher because it also stretches your hip.


You can bend your knee if you have to, you should feel this behind your leg.


Hamstring stretch
The easier option

Hamstring stretch at home
The tougher option

Quadricep stretch


This can also be done standing up if you prefer.


Quadricep stretch at home
Quad stetch

Hip flexor stretch


The key here is to keep the glute of the back leg engaged. This will stabilize your pelvis and give you a better stretch. Make sure you have enough padding under your knee to avoid any pain there.


Make sure keep your torso rigid as well, do not arch from your lower back as this will take away from the stretch.


Hip flexor stretch at home on my yoga mat
Proper form, glute tight, feeling the front of my left leg
Improper form, arching in lower back. Yes I am going further in the stretch but I'm not actually feeling the right muscles relax.
Improper form, arching in lower back. Yes I am going further in the stretch but I'm not actually feeling the right muscles relax.

Glutes stretch


The pigeon stretch is a great position to relax the glutes. I try my best to keep both hips on the ground.


Having the front shin parallel to the top of the matt like the second picture makes this stretch much, much more intense.


Pigeon pose at home on yoga matt
Notice my front shin not parallel with the top of the mat
Glute stretch at home on yoga mat
Now my front shin is parallel and my back hip is further off the ground.

Adductors/groin stretch


The classic splits feel amazing for me.


Try to keep your back straight and hinge from your hips. Like the hamstrings stretch above, we can reach further if we round our backs but that's not productive to get a quality stretch.



Calf stretch


Bending your knee will give you different stretches.


I am focusing on trying to reach my left heel to the ground.

Calf stretch at home home
Calf stretch

Upper body


Shoulder stretch


Shoulder stretch at home on my yoga matt in my living room
Shoulder stretch

Pec stretch


Lie on the ground and bring one leg behind you like I'm doing in the picture below. I am stretching my right pec so my right arm is behind me.


You can play around with how you place your arm. the further your elbow is from your shoulder the more intense the stretch in the pec (to certain extent).

Stretching my pec at home on a yoga matt in my living room
Pec stretch

Abs stretch


While doing this stretch, keep your glutes engaged. This will stabilize your pelvis and make the stretch more comfortable.

Stretching abs at home on a yoga matt in my living room
Elbows on the ground make this stretch easier
Stretching my abs at home on a yoga matt
Placing your hands on the ground will make this stretch more intense

Lower back stretch


This prone rotation feels absolutely amazing. You can even use your hand to push your knee closer to the ground if you want to. I personally like lying there and completely relaxing, focusing on my breathing.


Low back stretch
Low back stretch

Full body stretch routine follow along


You can also do this follow along stretch routine on Youtube so you can see exactly how I'm doing the exercises.


20 minutes full body follow along stretch routine

Conclusion: does stretching help reduce pain?


In my opinion, passive stretching offers a great way to relax tight muscles. Pairing these exercises with controlled and purposeful breathing is an amazing way to calm the body down and can be a smart pre bed routine.


It's one thing having tight muscles after a strenuous workout, it's another to have chronically tight muscles.


Muscles that are constantly tight are a symptom of muscle imbalances. These occur naturally and depend a lot of our day to day routine. People who sit at a desk for work may have tighter hip flexor and quads. People that lift things for a living or work outside may have tighter lower backs.


Passive stretching offers a good short term solution but is not a long term fix. Yes you will feel better after doing it because you'll have increased your stretch tolerance and relaxed. Lasting solutions require you to address the root cause of the imbalances.


Happy training/relaxing


Clem

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© 2023 by Clem Fitness.

Clem fitness online personal trainer

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