Stretching before and after exercise is a standard part of most people’s routine.It’s probably what has been drilled into most people from an early age to do before and after exercising. However, the science behind stretching is well researched and the intended effects an athlete looks for when performing routine stretching may not be what was once thought. To specifically define what we are talking about, we are referring to passive stretching - where you stretch and hold a muscle group at length for an extended period of time. Here is a brief summary of the proven benefits and drawbacks behind five main reasons why people stretch:

**1)      As a warm up to improve performance**
Passive stretching has all but been disproven to help you perform better when done as a warm up before an activity. However, it also doesn’t make you perform any worse, EXCEPT in sports that require high power production (eg: power lifting and sprinting) . In this case stretching before activity will *decrease* your peak output by around 4%. It is also suggested to decrease muscle efficiency in tasks that require good balance.
**2)      To help with recovery**
Again, passive stretching offers no benefit either way on speeding up or slowing down recovery after a bout of exercise. It doesn’t speed up recovery after a bout of exercise and it has little to no effect on reducing DOMS. When compared to doing nothing, passive stretching has no effect on improving your time to recovery post-exercise.
**3)      To prevent injury**
Yet again, passive stretching doesn’t reduce your chances of injury when done pre-activity, but nor does it increase your chances of getting injured either. Having said that, the fact that it drops your performance in high power sports tends to suggest that your chances of overdoing it in one of these particular sports after stretching would increase.

4) Because something feels tight and it needs to be stretched out

If this is the case for you, then there are most likely one of two situations present 1 - your muscles are guarding against movement: your brain and central nervous system has detected a threat and has tightened up to protect your body by restricting movement. You would know if you’ve been in this position because you try to stretch something out, and it actually makes it feel WORSE afterwards, and then tightens straight back up. and 2 - your muscles are fatigued and feel tight as a result of DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness). We have already discussed that passive stretching has no added benefit to help recovery and does not decrease the intensity of DOMS.

5) To get more flexibile

Finally, we are talking about a specific benefit of passive stretching. If you want to get more length in a muscle group, passive stretching will offer you some tangible improvements. Before you get too excited, the massive drawback here is the amount of time a passive stretch needs to be held to get the most out of it – it’s in the order of 3 - 5minutes. So that 30sec hold you’re currently doing is not really helping. So whilst passive stretching is quite effecting in helping get more flexible, it will require a huge time investment over an extended period of time for you to see meaningful gains. Is it worth that time investment? When compared to doing activities like strengthening through a full range of motion, which bring a multitude of other benefits on top of better flexibility, we always steer people towards things that get a better return on their time investment.

In summary, passive stretching is of no significant physiological benefit. There are shown benefits using passive stretching to get more flexible, using however given the large investment of time there are more valuable activities you could be doing instead that come with additional physical benefits on top of improving flexibility. Having said all of that, if you want to stretch because it makes you feel good, helps you to relax or get in the zone when exercising, then there’s nothing wrong with that at all. Just do it with the understanding that it’s a lower value activity than once previously thought.

Further Reading:

Behm, D.G., Alizadeh, S., Anvar, S.H. et al. Non-local Acute Passive Stretching Effects on Range of Motion in Healthy Adults: A Systematic Review with Meta-analysis. Sports Med 51, 945–959 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-020-01422-5
David G. Behm, Anthony J. Blazevich, Anthony D. Kay, and Malachy McHugh. 2016. Acute effects of muscle stretching on physical performance, range of motion, and injury incidence in healthy active individuals: a systematic review. Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism. 41(1): 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1139/apnm-2015-0235
Coratella G, Longo S, Rampichini S, Doria C, Borrelli M, et al. (2021) Passive stretching decreases muscle efficiency in balance tasks. PLOS ONE 16(9): e0256656. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.025665
Sands, William A. PhD, CSCS1; McNeal, Jeni R. PhD, CSCS*D2; Murray, Steven R. DA3; Ramsey, Michael W. PhD1; Sato, Kimitake PhD1; Mizuguchi, Satoshi PhD1; Stone, Michael H. PhD, FNSCA1. Stretching and Its Effects on Recovery: A Review. Strength and Conditioning Journal 35(5):p 30-36, October 2013. | DOI: 10.1519/SSC.0000000000000004

Is stretching worth your time?

Optimising Crank length for road, triathlon and time trial cyclists

Strength Training for Endurance Athletes