As I was cooling down from my run this morning, I started thinking about the amount of time it takes to do a thorough stretching session after a good workout. Mine added about twenty extra minutes, not to mention the 15 or so that I spent warming up well before getting started. At the very least, that’s thirty minutes on top of however long I spend in the middle of my workout.
As I was considering the time that this dedication calls for, I thought about my clients (and likely most other exercisers) and how easy it is to struggle at prioritizing that time. How hard it is to justify that extra time to taking care of yourself. It can feel kind of like this:
And, at the same time, I wondered at the way we all manage to take time for things that aren’t as health-promoting (like watching tv, playing games on our smart phones, stalking our friends on Facebook…). How is it that we have extra time to spend on these activities, but not on taking care of ourselves?
In my experience, most of us view time spent working out as a “chore,” whereas television and internet cat pictures are a “distraction.” While I’ll not try to convince anyone that their feelings are wrong, hopefully I can provide reasons to value your time in your workout a little more.
Whenever my clients lament to me that, “this exercise sucks!” Or, “this is so hard!” I try to refocus their attention on why we’re doing the exercises in the first place.
You’re right, it does suck. But it’s only going to suck right now. Later you’ll feel stronger and better than before!It’s good for you! Just like the vegetables you make your kids eat when they don’t want to.Remember XYZ goal? What you’re doing right now is going to help you achieve it!
Knowing the reason behind the workout helps all of us give our best effort when we may otherwise want to cut corners.
And yet, more often than not, practicing good flexibility habits are exempt from these lifestyle changes. Frequently I hear the claim that, “I only have XX minutes to workout. I have to drop something, so I skip stretching. That way I’m still doing the important stuff, and I can also get to work on time.”
Sound familiar?
Well, stop it!
Because, believe it or not, all areas of fitness are important. ALL of them work together to provide you with a fully functioning, dynamic body.
The conclusion that I’ve come to is that this must be a crisis of education. A large percentage of the population doesn’t understand why stretching is important. Allow me to rephrase that: I’d wager that if you aren’t in the fitness industry (and even then, some of us aren’t as good about it as we should be), you probably don’t know why stretching is important.
Oh, good grief!!
Stretching
In the 1980’s, most athletic professionals were singing the praise of stretching before performances. A study had come out indicating that longer muscles performed better than shorter muscles, a snippet of truth that is still relevant today. However, the study did not take into account warm versus cold muscles, and how the benefit of stretching can be mitigated based on the temperature of the muscle you’re stretching.
In this context, a warm muscle is one that has more blood pumping through it because it’s being used. A cold muscle is one that has not been moved through its full range of motion (ROM), and is therefore a little bit stiffer and does not have extra blood supplied to it.
Over the 20 years after that initial study, subsequent studies were done to better understand muscles and what conditions create the best performance. You can try a small experiment at home, too:
Stand up and try to jump forward (and please be careful so you don’t pull a muscle. Only do this experiment if you feel confident that you aren’t going to hurt yourself.).
Now do 15 squats and use your legs through their full ROM.
Try to jump again.
What you should have experienced is that your second jump attempt, regardless of actual performance difference, should have at least felt better than your first attempt. Maybe you were even able to notice an increase in performance output.
What you’ve likely experienced is a small-scale case study of what was discovered over those 20 years. Essentially, muscles have an ideal length for performance that is best discovered and maintained through regular use of the full ROM. Warm muscles are more receptive to their ROM, and better at giving power through their ROM.
What this boils down to is that it’s best to stretch warm muscles to maintain and improve muscular flexibility. This fact is exactly why you should focus on deep stretching when you are done exercising.
What Happens if I Don’t?
Muscles are amazing, miraculous, mind-bogglingly awesome things. Just ask me to explain how they work and I’ll geek out and give you a 30 minute lecture on motor units alone. For the sake of this article, I’m reigning myself in and sticking to the Spark Notes version.
Think of your muscles like Velcro. The two opposing sides of Velcro stick to each other pretty snugly. Try sticking Velcro together and then try to pull them across each other; it doesn’t work very well. It’s the amazing power of Velcro that makes stuff like this possible.
Every time you flex a muscle, the two opposing sides of the muscle fiber “crawl” across each other, using an intricate system of hooking and pulling that looks a lot like, you guessed it, Velcro. The more you flex the muscle, the more the fibers crawl. This is why body builders do things like squats and push ups before going on stage; the muscles literally bulge from the rush of blood and nutrients that come to them when they work, and the muscle fibers tend to get knotted up in each other. This is also why you feel swollen after a particularly challenging workout.
The red nubby things hook onto the purple chain things and “crawls”
When the muscle fibers are warm, it’s easy for them to slide from one length extreme to the other. That is to say, it’s easy for them to flex really hard, and then also be receptive to being stretched back to their ideal length. However, cold muscles don’t like to move. Cold muscles are stiff and stubborn, and that’s why they don’t perform as well.
If we complete a challenging workout, where our muscle fibers get all bunched up on each other, and then don’t stretch them back out, our muscles will cool in a shortened position. Meaning that their performance from then on will be stunted proportional to their length. Even worse, if the lack of stretching becomes chronic it can lead to severe and side-lining injuries.
1. Relaxed/stretched muscle. 2.-4. Various stages of muscle flexion/sarcomere length. Notice at 3. the muscle fibers are actually touching! Decreased performance after this point. 5. Over flexed muscle. Notice the massive overlap of the fibers. There’s no where else for it to go! Ideal length is somewhere between 1. and 2.
Lack of Stretching and Injuries
Muscles are attached to our bones in a balanced, pulley-like system in an ideal world. In a realistic world, muscle tightness can exert force on our skeletal structure and actually cause it to change its alignment.Positions that we take often (sitting down, for instance) start to dominate every posture and adversely affect performance (tight hip flexors rotate the pelvis forward, causing lower stomach pooch, vulnerable and weak lower back, counter rotation of the shoulders forward to maintain balance).
Posture posture posture!
Tight muscles from repeated athletic patterns can result in common, but preventable, overuse injuries (ie, swimmer’s shoulder, tennis elbow, runner’s knees).
Muscles work in opposing pairs that ideally balance each other’s effect on the skeleton. Wherever there is an over tight muscle, you can pretty safely assume that there’s an over stretched muscle on the opposite side of it to compensate. Over stretched muscles can’t crawl across each other very well, and can lead to other muscle compensations. Compensations train neighboring muscles to do jobs they were never intended to do, thus resulting in more overuse injuries. A great example of this is the relationship between glutes and hamstrings.
Most of us have hamstrings that are too tight (when’s the last time you comfortably touched anywhere near your toes…with mostly straight legs?) as a result of our very sedentary lifestyle. We have long commutes, desk jobs, and at the end of the day we’re so exhausted we just want to…sit down and do nothing!
This poor dude has some REALLY tight hamstrings. It would be more beneficial to have his hands closer to his body so that he could get his knees to the ground.
The job of the hamstring is to close the angle of the knee. That is, it brings your heel toward your butt. Very tight hamstrings can cause a posterior rotation of the pelvis, shutting down the glute complex.
The job of the glute is to open the angle of the hip. That is, it moves your entire leg behind your body. But a butt that’s shut down can’t create enough power to move an entire leg by itself. So its very helpful neighbor, the hamstring, starts to do that job, too. Not only does this encourage the butt to stay shut down, it’s tightening your hamstring in places it wasn’t meant to tighten. This can lead to exacerbated tightness, pulled muscles, strains, and other soft tissue injuries and irritations. Long-term irritation can lead to chronic problems, like tendonitis and even arthritis in some extreme cases.
Conclusion
Whew, that one was a doosie! Were you able to stay with me there?
The whole point of this article is to (hopefully) depict why flexibility training is just as important as all other types of fitness. Without flexibility, your muscles can’t generate power. Without power, your strength isn’t very functional. Without function, your muscles can’t carry you over distances at varying speeds. Each area of fitness overlaps the other, and they are ALL equally important.
So the next time you find yourself short on time, shorten your workout so you still have time to cool down and stretch at the end. If you still want to get the sweat pouring in under 30 minutes of workout, check out some interval training resources I’ve listed below. Hopefully they will inspire you to get a great workout in, no matter how much time you have!
Workout Resources (FREE)
www.bodyrock.tv (12 minute workouts, 9 minute bonus abs rounds)
Huffington Post-15 Minute Workout (15 minute isometric no equipment workout)
Fitness Blender (40 minute no equipment workout)
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