2 vital reasons why stretching improves sporting performance

It would make sense that improving your range of movement would lessen your chance of injury.

But how does it improve performance?

There are a lot of ideas we could form around how improving mobility may improve performance. But here I want to look at 2 big ones, one that is fairly obvious, and one that contradicts popular beliefs.  Discussing these points will require a bit of science, so buckle up and I’ll try and keep the jargon to a minimum.

1. Inability to access ideal form.

This one should be fairly obvious.

If you have limited ability to dorsiflex at the ankle (pull your toes towards your shin) your squat depth will suffer, which could impact easy to see examples such as a squat, or be the thing that causes you to get injured repeatedly when you run.

Less obvious movements that are impacted, are those that are easily compensated for.

For example, in order to press a weight overhead, it is necessary to flex the shoulder, and ideally, posteriorly tilt the ribcage (lift the chest).

This is a position that is very difficult for many people-in fact, I rarely see anyone that can do this well that hasn’t spent time working on it.

What happens instead, is that the shoulder limitations are reached, the athlete is unable to tilt the ribcage, and so extends (overarches) at the lower back instead.

This means transfer of force from the feet to the weight overhead is hindered. We could also see similar annoyances in a surfer who is limited in shoulder flexion, where the shoulders fatigue early, and fatigue and pain in the back and neck also cause issues when paddling.

Not being able to find the ideal form doesn’t mean you cant do the thing.

It just means compensations will be made that will mean a loss of efficiency, weakness and more likelihood of eventual injury.

2. Improved power transfer

There is an idea that seems to float around that stretching causes ligaments and tendons to become lax, which means that tendons become less stiff, and lose the ability to transfer power.

Like so may things in the fitness industry, there is no real truth in this.

This notion most likely comes from studies that looked at post-stretching exercise, whereby an athlete performed a maximum vertical jump before and after a held stretch for 60 seconds or more.

After the stretching the athletes jump height was lessened.

This has been extrapolated to so many things that demonise stretching in the last few years, and has paved the way for foam rollers and other often useless elements to prep and recover from activity. It always seems more effective to have a physical thing that helps you though right!?

In the case of the research mentioned, it would be advised to avoid stretching for lengths of 60 seconds or more before trying for a maximum explosive effort. Hardly everyday real world applications.

People who quote these studies often talk about stretching reducing stiffness of a joint, with the idea that looser means less able to generate force. Studies that have been around for long enough for everyone in the industry to know better, have shown no change in stiffness/force relationships following stretching. This means that the idea that a joint has become lax due to stretching is probably untrue.

Outside of this there is some research around to suggest that the ability to create force is improved by stretching and flexibility work, possibly through viscoelastic properties of tendons, and involvement of fascia in force production.

The point to be made here is that the talk on the street around improving flexibility will reduce power is false.

There is more work to be done on the academic side of this, but it should be logical, that if we can move better through larger ranges of motion, we will likely be able to access better power development, even if it isn’t within the end ranges of our motion.

On an academic level we can make a pretty solid case for the points above. However, it is pretty common to hear of people feeling like they are unable to create as much force after stretching. In line with the neurological impacts that effect the maximum jump results, it is likely that stretching alone is unlikely to be enough if sporting performance is the goal. Understanding how to use the end ranges of motion, and becoming strong in these end ranges is key to using them, and is exactly what the Not Really Yoga system is set on improving.

In this regard stretching probably just makes you good at stretching. Studying tendon stiffness and force curves are great in the lab, but seeing and feeling the full effects of stretching and it's associated activities are best understood in an application that sees changing joint angles and demands on the body.

There's plenty more to say on this, way beyond the scope of this bit of writing, but end point here is that stretching is more likely to improve your sporting performance than hinder it.