A closer look at static stretching

An accomplished triathlete and good friend of mine asked me recently about the proper placement of stretches within his weekly workout cycle.  That got me thinking, and this post was born out of my answer to him.  It is a generally accepted principle that regardless of your status as an athlete, stretching proves to be beneficial.  There are plenty of different methods to apply a stretch to tissue in need- what seems to be the best practice for endurance athletes?

One theory that is enjoying increased clarity from the findings of current research is that static stretching prior to activity can be detrimental to endurance athletes.  Static stretching can be described many ways, but for my purposes I will define it here as holding a single isolated stretch for greater than 10 seconds. Performing targeted static stretches prior to placing demands on stretched muscles compromises the muscles ability to produce power.  One of the proposed mechanisms for the observed loss in power is that long static stretches pull apart neighboring fast twitch muscle fibers.  This unbinding of muscle fibers at the cellular level hampers their short term contractile ability.  I feel like this is something that sprinters have innately known to be true for years- well before there was research to back the theory.  You would be hard pressed to find a sprinter or power track & field athlete performing long, slow, static stretching before an event. 

Let me stress that the negative effects associated with static stretching are found when static stretching is performed pre exercise.  I haven't found much in the way of credible literature that reports negative effects of post exercise static stretching.  One method that I have put into practice is called active isolated stretching, also known as the Mattes Method.  Hold a regional stretch for 3-5 seconds, release, and repeat 5-6 times.  This allows for approximately 30 seconds of stretch on targeted muscle/tissue, and the short stretch/release cycle allows for blood flow back into stretched tissues.  This is important because a prolonged stretch creates a ischemic environment in the targeted muscle, and the stretch/release cycle allows accumulated toxins to be flushed out with each release.

To learn more about active isolated stretching, please visit:  http://www.stretchingusa.com/

To read more about static stretching and it's negative effects on endurance performance, please visit Sweat Science, an excellent resource for athletes of all types. http://sweatscience.com/