How Long Should You Stretch For?

When will you see a difference?

For anyone who is looking to increase their flexibility or range of motion, stretching is unquestionably important. However, there are factors about yourself and the goals you have that affect the way you go about stretching. Your age, body temperature, flexibility goals, and even past injuries will all play into the way you stretch and how quickly you can gain flexibility.

How does stretching change with age?

The older we get the stiffer we seem to become. This results in a change to the protocol you should deploy for maximal results. Individuals who are in adolescence or early adulthood can get away with only stretching a muscle in sessions of thirty seconds and still see improvements. The improvements for continuing to stretch for a minute or longer per muscle see returns diminish. However, for the older population (60+), a minute is far more effective, and little improvement will happen with shorter times. So, if you are young and healthy, you may be able to get away with only stretching for 30 seconds per muscle 5x per week, while someone over 60 will need to spend 60 seconds per muscle. That's over double the time needed to see a similar level of improvement! Regardless of your age, there are still improvements whether you stretch for the optimal time or not. Some stretching will always be better than no stretching no matter your age.

Should you warm up before stretching?

When someone says to do a "warm-up" before stretching, that may mean different things to different people. To some, it may look like a couple of jumping jacks, to others maybe some arm swings and twisting motions, but the important thing is to raise your body temperature. The act of literally making your muscles warm before stretching is paramount to your success. The way you warm up can be passive (like in a sauna or steam room) or active (like running laps) but the important thing is to get your muscles heated.

When your muscles are warm it allows them to move more freely. The nature of your muscles is to move like a viscous substance, but that viscosity can be reduced by increasing their temperature. Viscosity will have the effect of increasing the time it takes for the muscle to stretch, relax, and lengthen. By coming into a stretch already warm, you can immediately begin to work on the neurological and muscular limiting factors that will increase your flexibility instead of fighting through what is nothing more than a stiff cold muscle just to get back to a place your body is already comfortable stretching to. That means you will have to stretch for longer and see less results if you stretch cold. Also, you will already be warm at the end of a workout so that is the perfect time to stretch for flexibility.

How do my goals affect my stretching routine?

If you're stretching to increase passive flexibility, active range of motion, or just warm up for an exercise, the methods you deploy should all differ. When training for nothing more than passive range of motion, you can stretch for shorter periods broken up into more sessions. Essentially amounting to repetitions of stretching but for the same overall length of stretching time. Interestingly, this is not the case for active range of motion. If you wish to improve your active range, you will have to bear through a longer continuous session of stretching(5). Another factor to consider is flexing your stretched muscle while in your stretched position. If your goal is to improve flexibility outright, facilitated stretching is a proven way to help increase you neurological and muscular response to stretching. This is not an article dedicated to just facilitated stretching, but it is worth looking into.

When you are trying to stretch for a warm up and not for increases in flexibility or range of motion, it is important to never static stretch before a muscularly demanding exercise. Static stretching can decrease your strength by up to 30% and can even effect your athletic ability negatively for up to 24 hours after an intense stretching session (say 15 min or so of uncomfortable stretching). This is the last thing you want to do before you try to perform a weight lifting routine or a sprinting regimen. Instead what you should consider is dynamic stretching. This consists of motions in your active range where by you swing or move through your motions that allow your muscles to activate. Dynamic stretches have the effect of priming the nervous system for the activity at hand and simultaneously warming them. The key is to stretch statically after workouts and dynamically before workouts.

I'm not making progress with my flexibility.

When this happens it could be due to a litany of reasons, some of which we covered here. This topic deserves its own post as well. Your hydration level, your body temperature, your time stretching, the type of stretching you do, the amount of stretching sessions you do, your age, your stretching form, and many other factors can influence whether or not you are making progress. It is also possible to stretch too much to where your muscles tighten and become sore instead of allowing you to extend to new lengths. Often, a past injury and resulting scar tissue can bind and stiffen your body making progress slow and painful, sometimes unnoticeably so. Just keep in mind that if you don't make progress, it may not be due to lack of diligence in your time stretching. There are other factors which you should consider.

Stretching can be optimized in many ways and tailored to your body and needs. However, even if you are not stretching optimally, some stretching will always be better than none (unless you're severely injured where you want to stretch).

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Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Department of Physical Education and Sports Sciences Thessaloniki, Greece Physical Training Sept 2005.

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