So, the title is rather outrageous in my opinion – but earlier I was involved in a discussion with someone, who claims to have learned in school that you should stretch after exercise, otherwise training a muscle without stretching it would lead to shortening of said muscle and subsequent issues with imbalances and posture and such. He did not specify what type of training or population this was referring to, but it sounded entirely implausuble to me. I know that the barbell medicine stance on stretching is that it’s not correlated with health outcomes or particularly beneficial for training performance, but
- is there any evidence supporting the notion that if you don’t stretch at all, but train in some sport, you would have any problems down the road that can be tied to this lack of mobility work?
- Is there a plausible mechanism if no clinical data is available?
- If neither, what is a convincing counterargument to challenge this position? My take is that if the claim were true, there would be an epidemic of mobility problems, as I assume that a significant portion of active people, be it strength training or other, do not engage in regular stretching. Appreciate any data or opinions on this topic.