Stretching

To stretch or not to stretch?

If you do much reading about stretching from various sites, authors and professionals there are different controversies surrounding stretching. When is the best time to stretch before or after a workout? Does stretching actually make the muscle longer in length? Are we stretching the muscles, fascia, or joint capsule with different stretches? What is the best method when it comes to stretching – static, dynamic, contract/relax? If static stretching how long should you hold the stretch? What are the best stretches to do? With all these questions someone might ask do I need to stretch, does it actually do anything?

Bring these questions up and you are bound to get a variety of answers and most people will have some research or personal story that backs what they think about stretching. Well I don't plan on solving or answering all these questions because I don't think we have all the answers. But let me shed some light on a few things that I see as important about stretching.

When stretching I don't think many of us think about it as an activation of our proprioceptive system. The proprioceptive system is our body's internal nervous system that helps with balance and movement. It is the nerves in our muscles, joints, ligaments, tendons and possibly even the skin according to some new research that send information to the brain to tell us where we are at. That is why if you close your eyes you can feel if your elbow is bent or straight and nearly replicate the same bend in the other elbow without looking. Any time our body moves our proprioceptive system is activated. It is most active with movement as it measures the velocity/speed of movement, vibration, pressure, touch, tension or stretch. So when we stretch we are activating the proprioceptive system, especially as we get to end ranges of motion as with stretching a motion our body maybe doesn't experience very often. The value of activating our proprioceptive system is found in many ways: it helps activate or "turn on" our muscles, it provides continual info to our brain to help us improve our balance and movement (this is valuable to the young person in making them more athletic – Michael Jordan was very proprioceptively gifted, or the older person in preventing falls). Just like any skill our body develops the more we use it the better we get at it. If we continually challenge our proprioceptive system it gets better. When we stretch we are actually improving our proprioceptive system. So with this concept in mind we see that answering the question does stretching actually do anything, we can answer with a resounding YES.

• So is it better to stretch before or after a workout? – both have there benefits from utilizing the proprioceptive system before and after.
• Does the muscle actually get longer after stretching? – it can be debated, but the proprioceptive system is activated throughout the full range the muscle and joints can move.
• What are we stretching when we stretch? – again it can be debatable, but we know for sure we are activating the proprioceptive system.
• So what is the best method (static, dynamic, contract/relax, others)? – all of them are important to do so we train the muscle to work proprioceptively through all the different types of movements.
• What are the best stretches to do? – all of them, but especially movements that we don't move through with our regular activities)

So spend some time stretching each day – your proprioceptive system will appreciate it.  Let me know what you think of stretching.