The Right Way to Stretch

For many of us, our early memories of stretching come from gym class. There, we did windmills, where we jerked one side of our body toward the other while touching one hand to the opposite foot. We probably also remember stretching being an exercise in group counting, with a leader saying, “One, two, three,” and the group responding, “Four!” So even when we weren’t bouncing around, we were holding our stretches for a few seconds, at best.

I hope I don’t disillusion you too much when I tell you that what you were taught in school wasn’t quite the truth about stretching. (And you thought it was only in sex ed class that you were given misinformation.) Bouncy, jerky movements and stretches that are held for a few seconds aren’t the kind of flexibility exercises that are going to help you as a runner. If anything, they’ll hurt you; you’re better off not stretching at all if you’re not going to do it right.

What is the right way to stretch? A good way to understand the right way is to know more about the wrong ways. The bouncy, jerky stretching I just described is called ballistic stretching. It’s bad because when you make a movement that lengthens a muscle, its initial reaction is to contract. Think about what happens when you briefly extend a coil, and then suddenly let it go. The same quick return to a shorter state happens when you stretch ballistically. This type of stretching increases, rather than lessens, the amount of tension in your muscles. In some cases, it can cause the muscles to tear. That’s not a great way to lower your risk of injury.

The right way to stretch is to do so comfortably, gently, and consistently. Improving, or at least maintaining, your flexibility is similar to improving your endurance. The key to progress in your running is to find a comfortable level of effort and to work out regularly at that level. As you stick with that approach, your endurance will increase, and you can gradually run more, or faster, without any more effort.

The same is true with stretching. Regardless of the specific exercise you’re doing, you want to find a point where the muscles you’re working on are stretched just enough so that you can feel it, but not so much that it’s obvious you’re overdoing it. This type of stretching is known as static stretching. As with the first part of your running program, when in doubt, ease up. It’s better to stretch a muscle a bit less than to overdo it. As with boosting your endurance, when it comes to flexibility, slow and long are better than fast and short. You should hold all stretches for at least 15 seconds. Thirty seconds is even better. This amount of time encourages increased blood flow to the muscles you’re concentrating on, which will gradually elongate them. When you comfortably hold a stretch for 15 to 30 seconds, the muscles will relax. This reduction in muscular tension is what makes you feel looser, both right after the stretch and from day to day when you’re consistent with your flexibility program.

After the stretch, relax the muscles you’re working on for the same amount of time. Then do the stretch once more, again holding it for 15 to 30 seconds. By the end of the second time you’ve done a certain stretch, you’ll probably notice that your flexibility in that area is greater than when you began, just like your normal training pace is easier 10 minutes into a run than at the beginning.

Some runners find it helps to time their stretches to ensure that they’re holding them for that 15 to 30 second range. Many people who say that they can’t hold a stretch for that long say so because they hold their breath while they stretch. After 10 or so seconds, they let the stretch go because they need to breathe. You should always be able to breathe normally while stretching.