What you are going to do is to forget the most of what you thought you knew about stretching..
If you are a standard athlete or anyone who hangs around at the gym you’ll know how long to stretch for. Its a 10-20 second hold of the stretch in your warm up, and maybe you go mad in the after workout stretch and go for those 30 to 40 seconds hold.
The only problem is , you are wrong!!!
The first 30 days of stretching!
It’s about time that you began to understand the secrets behind effective stretching. The secrets begin with understanding what the process is.
The first part of the process, in the first 30 days, is that improvements in your range of motion in the joint occur because you tolerate the discomfort more (aka Stretch Tolerance) NOT, because you have lengthened the muscle. Check out Law et al 2009
Law et al, 2009. Stretch exercises increase tolerance to stretch in patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain: a randomized controlled trial.
In the first few weeks of a stretching regime, any increase in the range of motion is due to an improvement in Stretch Tolerance. This gives you a transient increase in range of motion, and you’ll probably feel a bit looser. If you use stretching as part of a pain reduction programme, these short stretches will help build your confidence. But, no actual physical improvement in your muscle extensibility ( you’ve pushed open a rusty door and you are getting used to the grinding and stretching noise the hinges make).
Well, now we enter the real world of full on, proper, big boy stretching, and this comes with spooky therapy words like “tensegrity” and “mechano-transduction” and the “Thixotropic Effect”, which states the longer a tissue is under load, the more adaptable it will become. This all leads to the rule of thumb that says if we want to make physical changes to your muscles you need to apply force to the tissues for around two -three minutes .
This three minute mark is determined as the average time it takes a cells to recognise the stresses being placed on it. The longer and more regular the stress, the more the body goes. “we better adapt to this” .
Dr. Andreo Spina frequently states, “Force is the language of cells.”
Keep in mind that stretching one time for two minutes will not create a permanent change. It takes a lot of repeated stimulus over a long period of time to create actual changes to tissues. This follows the Thixotropic Effect, which states the longer a tissue is under load, the more adaptable it will become.
To put this all in context, jumping straight to 3 minute stretching is a silly idea. Use that first month to build up. I started with sets: 3 sets of 10 seconds, then 20 seconds, then a week later 30 seconds. We know that first period is building up tolerance, so, “just build up tolerance”
If you look at Porter D, Barrill E, Oneacre K, May BD. The effects of duration and frequency of Achilles tendon stretching on dorsiflexion and outcome in painful heel syndrome: a randomized, blinded, control study. Foot Ankle Int 2002;23(7):619-624.
You’ll find two protocols coming neck and neck:
3 minute of stretching 3 x a day, or five sets, 20 seconds each, two times daily.
Either way, the take home message that a quick reluctant 10 second stretch when you can be bothered, isn’t enough. The study also determined that both sustained and intermittent Achilles tendon stretching exercises increase Achilles tendon flexibility. This increase in flexibility correlated with a decrease in pain!
TAKE HOME MESSAGE
3 minute of stretching 3 x a day, or five sets, 20 seconds each, two times daily.