Podcast 17

Should I Stretch Before or After a Strength Training Session?

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SHOW NOTES

Before you jump into your next exercise session, learn why what you’ve been told about stretching is completely wrong and how it can actually increase the odds of you getting injured. Brian and Amy explore some common myths regarding stretching before and after exercise and discuss whether or not stretching is a necessary component of strength training.

• Do you need to stretch before you work out? There are a lot of prevailing myths around stretching and exercise and people are usually coming at this from one of two angles, either to prevent injury or to increase performance.
• In terms of preventing injuries, stretching has been shown in a number of studies to have no impact on the likelihood of injury. Even with uncontrolled environments like a sport, stretching doesn’t seem to have an effect on the odds of getting injured.
• There is a difference between stretching and a dynamic warm up, which is something that can be beneficial before physical activity.
• In strength training, the key to preventing injuries is to control the forces that the body is exposed to. Clients in the Exercise Coach undergo no intentional stretching before exercising.
• Static stretching before an activity does not reduce the odds of an injury, but it does have a negative impact on performance. Over a hundred studies showed that static stretching reduced the strength of the muscle by at least 5%.
• Stretching is like loading a muscle so it makes sense that it would reduce the muscular capacity.
• When it comes to stretching after a workout, there are a couple of things that people believe. The first is to reduce muscle soreness.
• The trouble is soreness is not a good indicator of whether or not you performed an effective workout and not everybody gets sore after strength training.
• Several studies showed that stretching, before or after exercise, has no impact on delayed muscle soreness. To actually prevent muscle soreness one of the best things you can do is get your body into motion sooner. It can take delayed muscle a couple days to set in, so getting in your next workout can prevent that.
• A common myth regarding strength training is that it will make your muscles tight or inflexible. It’s not the case that muscles lose flexibility as they get bigger, so the idea of stretching to prevent tightness is based on a false assumption.
• Resistance training has been shown to actually improve flexibility, not reduce it. It’s very common, especially people who have experienced the effects of aging, that when they start to engage in a safe and effective strength training program that they will start to move better too.
• The best way to gain flexibility is through the safe and controlled exercises available at the Exercise Coach. When we perform strength training, especially eccentric training, our bodies produce new proteins that contribute to making our muscles more flexible, which doesn’t happen with static stretching.
• The main takeaways regarding stretching is that you don’t need to do it to prevent injuries before exercise and it’s not necessary to prevent soreness or stiffness. It’s okay to stretch to relax, but it’s not a necessary component of a strength training program.

Do I need to stretch before I work out? Why do people think that this might be the case? And I’ll say upfront that the answers that we’re gonna give are probably gonna be a little surprising for some people because of prevailing myths.

Welcome back to the Strength Changes Everything podcast. I’m Amy Hudson, exercise coach franchisee here with my co -host, Brian Sagan, CEO and co -founder of The Exercise Coach. And today we are talking all about stretching. So specifically, the question we want to address is, should I stretch before or after a strength training session? So welcome, Brian. And what are your thoughts on this question today?

Hey, Amy, well, I like the way you posed it. I think that’s the way that we hear this question framed, usually. It’s about stretching before or after a workout. So we’ll just talk about it that way. So the first question, do I need to stretch before I work out? Why do people think that this might be the case?

That’s how we’ll tackle the answer. And I’ll say up front that the answers that we’re going to give are probably going to be a little surprising for some people because of prevailing myths. We’re going to share answers that really we’ve been given for many years, and that when you look at the exercise physiology research, that these answers are at this point about 15 or 20 years old. This is not necessarily new information, but it’s new to a lot of people. It shouldn’t be that new to exercise professionals. So should I stretch before a workout?

People are asking this usually for a couple reasons. They’re asking, should I stretch to prevent injury? And they’re asking, should I stretch to improve performance? And so we’ll just take them in that order. So in terms of preventing injury, I would say from our experience and from the research, the answer is no, you don’t need to perform stretching activity prior to strength training to prevent injury. In fact, Many researchers and fitness professionals have moved away from stretching even before sporting activities for the purpose of preventing injury.

And this is based on research. One research group was led by a medical doctor named Stephen Thacker. And in his research, he actually did a review of literature. And Thacker and his colleagues looked at nearly 100 published studies. a hundred published medical studies on the subject and their key conclusion was that stretching does not prevent injuries and I would say one thing to be aware of is that what we’re talking about here is stretching prior to a safe controlled strength training session and Thacker and others actually have looked at stretching related to sporting activities and they’ve still concluded that stretching did not prevent injuries. One study actually looked at runners and the conclusion was that the data showed that runners were more likely to get injured if they stretched before running.

So the notion that we need to stretch before a sporting activity or before strength training just isn’t the case. Now, if you are going to engage in a sporting activity, something that’s inherently high impact, or you’re going to be sprin moving directions, all of today would recommend some warm up prior to that act not what we’re talking ab training, the key to prev is just controlling the forces that the body’s exposed to. And as an example at the exercise coach, we’ve done millions of workouts with tens of thousands of people in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and even beyond. And we’ve done millions of workouts with these people with zero intentional stretching or dynamic warmup prior to their strength training session. Now, occasionally in some of our cold winter Regions, someone might come in and be freezing and want to hop on a bike and just get their blood flowing a little bit for a minute before they start their workout.

But we’ve done millions of workouts with no intentional stretching prior to the session, and we’ve done so safely. And what research shows is that stretching, static stretching before activity does not reduce the risk of injury. But it can’t hurt, right? To stretch, that’s what people might ask.

Yeah, you’d think that, right? It couldn’t hurt.

You might think that, but as it relates to performance, once again, when we look at the research, we get a different answer. This is something that’s been known for a while that performing stretching exercises prior to activities that require strength actually diminishes performance. One study involved looking at once again, in this case, over 100 studies using static stretching. This was a group of Croatian researchers, and according to their work, they found that static stretching reduced the strength of a stretched muscle by more than 5 % than in the activity that immediately followed the stretch. And if stretches were held for a long time, 90 seconds or more, the decreases in strength during the strength activity were decreased actually by more.

And so yes, stretching prior to a strength training workout, can actually hurt your results.

That’s actually surprising, but it makes sense if you think about it. The act of stretching is actually loading and wearing your muscle out a little bit. And so when you’re about to engage in a workout, particularly the workout at the exercise coach, we are getting started by loading your muscle slowly, safely, and in a way that’s challenging, but it’s not that jolting, jarring, fast, abrupt loading that would cause an injury. It’s that slow, safe, effective load. So we want our muscles fresh for that. And this is really interesting research that shows that it may not even be super helpful to, to stretch beforehand.

So now let’s talk about after the workout then Brian, what would you say about stretching after a strength training workout?

What are people asking when they ask, shouldn’t I stretch after a workout? There’s normally a couple of things that are really what they’re asking about in that case.

Yeah, so let’s talk about it in the light of stretching to prevent muscle soreness.

Yep, that’s the first one. So stretching to prevent muscle soreness. And first of all, as it relates to soreness, this is a topic that we can’t really have a ton of clarity on just because some people get sore from strength training, and some people don’t. And some people get sore in different muscle groups and not other muscle groups. And I would say also that soreness is not an indicator of whether or not you’ve performed exercise that’s effective.

But as it relates to preventing this soreness, what the research shows is that stretching after your workout just doesn’t do it. One group published a study in 2012, and they looked at more than 12 studies with 2 ,300 participants and concluded muscle stretching, whether conducted before or after exercise, does not produce clinically important reductions in delayed onset muscle soreness in healthy adults. And there are numerous studies that have come to the same conclusion. And in fact, what we have seen actually helps with soreness is some activity or getting back in for another workout sooner, that delayed onset muscle soreness can really take a few days to kick in. And what we’ve seen is the best way to alleviate it is actually getting in for your next workout. But stretching right after the workout, like some people think, is not going to ward off that delayed onset muscle soreness if it’s going to happen for you.

That’s also super good to know, right? If somebody feels sore right after their workout or delayed onset muscle soreness, having stretched right after their workout isn’t actually going to make much of a difference in that. And like you said, maybe getting back in for the next one is what it will take. Now, what about the question about preventing our muscles from getting tight? Would stretching after a strength training workout do anything to help prevent our muscles from getting tight?

In this case, I would actually challenge the question.

Right?

The questioner is asking, don’t I need to do stretching? after the workout to prevent my muscles from getting tight or stiff or inflexible because I’m doing strength training, but there’s a presupposition there, right? That strength training causes our muscles to get tight. And so really, we’re going to address it at that level. The answer is no, you don’t need to do stretching after your strength training workout to prevent your muscles from getting tight. This has no basis in any science whatsoever.

And in fact, there’s actually science supporting that resistance training doesn’t make your muscles tight or stiff or inflexible. In fact, it does the opposite. One researcher named James Whitehead says there’s an old notion that if you do resistance training, You have to stretch those muscles too. But he says it’s a hangover to the myth that muscles lose flexibility as they get bigger. It’s not the case. Some other researchers at the University of Central Arkansas looked at strength training and especially eccentric strength training and found that especially eccentric training, but even resistance training in general, actually improve flexibility and that the gains achieved when they looked at eccentric training were equal to those gains that were made by doing stretching, in this case for the hamstring muscles.

So as we’ve seen time and time again, especially people that have experienced some of the effects of the aging process, when they simply engage in safe, effective whole effort personalized strength training program, they start to move better. In some cases, they start to see dramatic improvements in range of motion. It’s like they get a neurological in some area of their body and their muscles move way better. So I would just push back and say, no, absolutely not. You don’t need to stretch after to prevent your muscles from getting tight.

In fact, you need to know that doing strength training is going to improve your flexibility and mobility.

Yes. And Brian, that’s a really key point that we really want people to understand because often when we meet new people, a main goal that many people have out there is to enjoy flexibility and feel that mobility that they’re going to be able to use their body to do what they want. And it’s important for people to understand that the way to gain that flexibility best is through that safe eccentric training that’s available at the exercise coach that has done so well and so focused. on some of our machines and our exerbotics technology in particular with all of our protocols for the goal of building that muscle flexibility and lengthening those muscle fibers over and above static stretching as a way to achieve that flexibility. So thank you for making that point because it is an important thing to a lot of people.

Yeah, and it happens by a different mechanism, I think, as well. When we perform the strength training, especially the eccentric training, our body actually lays down new protein elements that contribute to making the muscle more flexible. It’s called sarcomerogenesis. And that’s not really something that’s happening from the static stretching. Static stretching is improving your ability to move or your range of motion by a different mechanism, which is known as stretch tolerance, increasing stretch tolerance. Basically, you get used to neurologically that tug on tissues, but it’s a different mechanism.

Exactly. Yeah, that’s a really eye -opening truth there. Brian, overall, what takeaway would you have for people listening to this episode?

Just the main takeaway is to understand about stretching. Sure. I guess in review, as it relates to stretching before and after a strength training workout, according to research, you don’t have to do it to prevent injuries. You don’t have to do it to improve performance. In fact, it might get in the way of your performance. You don’t have to do it to prevent muscle soreness.

and you don’t need to do it to prevent your muscles from getting tight. In fact, strength training will improve flexibility. And so I would say while static stretching might have some relaxation benefits, other than that, it’s a fairly benign activity, not really contributing much in the way of health and fitness benefits. And so it’s just one more thing that people don’t really have to worry about when they’re thinking about all that they need to do to get started or to invest in optimizing their health and fitness. They can get more bang for their buck by doing strength training, which is honestly completely necessary to maximize their health and the quality of their life. I just think the takeaway is that once again, strength changes everything.

And we don’t want anyone to be apprehensive about performing strength training without some elaborate stretching routine that’s tied to it. It’s not necessary. We can be much more efficient about it. We have been with tens of thousands of clients. And the number one thing getting in people’s way is the amount of time. that it takes to actually get the results that matter most to them.

And they can do it with a 20 minute whole effort strength training session performed a couple times a week. That sounds great. Nothing more for me to say besides awesome. Good news. So I hope you found this information helpful today.

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