This comes up regularly on the pod. Including the one today. And the message is consistently stretching does not not prevent injury.
I’ve scanned through research and some recent meta-analysis and they concur. I didn’t dig real deep though, so thought I’d ask a few questions.
Are there long term studies that show this? I could imagine a scenario where a study is conducted for 6 weeks or a few months. Two groups, stretching not stretching, collect some data, see if there’s a significant difference in injury.
Is it possible studies aren’t looking broadly enough? That stretching shows benefits over long term practice? Like take someone who does Sun Salutations to wake up every morning for 20 or 30m for 10 years. Do they have lower injury incidence?
I’ve also picked up on a frequent caveats after the observation that pre-exercise stretching doesn’t prevent injury. Like directed or targeted stretching for a specific problem area where ROM is an issue could help. But usually doesn’t go deeper.
For example, I have chronic plantar fasciitis. Started getting it as a runner when I was around 25. Moved to cycling, now I’m swimming too. But it’s almost a guarantee it comes back within a few weeks of trying to run again.
Every PT program I’ve seen for fascitis involves a ton of stretching. It’s all about hamstring, glutes, calf stretching and ROM. With some foot strength thrown in. Is this just a cargo cult routine and the stretching has no actual benefit for rehabilitation? Or is this one of those targeted incidences where there’s proof of benefit?
I believe the longest data set on stretching on injury vs. multi-modal intervention is ~ 3 months. That said, I don’t think doing it longer is likely to prevent injury. Exercise is a great way to reduce risk of injury, whereas stretching does not appear to be. Stretching actually has a risk of injury itself.
I don’t think stretching is very good for injury management either, unless it’s the only movement someone can do. Regarding plantar fasciitis, we have about a thousand treatments for it because almost none of them work very well. Still, people like stretching here. Some evidence of short term relief, as reviewed in our article here.
FWIW, your specific issue sounds like a training load thing regarding running.
I know of some people that could create a specific graduated plan for you
Without knowing more, I would favor aerobic interval work to bridge the gap from no running to some running, with another day’s conditioning being walking (but much longer). I would otherwise be relying on cross training efforts for actual conditioning stimulus, and have these two sessions (to start) be more of a sports-specific reintroduction.
Duly noted. I’m in between coaches right now now. Had a strength coach for about a year or so post rehab. He was great and I made a lot of progress.
But I also swim, bike, mountain bike….and maybe run again. And I didn’t feel the workout plans were as tailored for those activities as they could be. So stepped back for a bit to think on it.
BBM is on my list, though. Trying out the plans first to see how I like them. They’re definitely a different cadence than I was doing before.
Thought I’d piggy back on this thread since it’s related to injury prevention…..
I don’t hear “warmups” mentioned except in passing. I tend to do some kind of warm up to at least get a sense for whether I have some strain or ache I need to watch out for.
But do we know if warming up reduces injury? Intuitively seems ill advised to bring it on a 1 rep max first lift of the day….burn then I’d have said the same about stretching.
Sorry. What do you mean that you don’t hear warm-ups mentioned? By whom? We talk about warm-ups quite frequently in the texts accompanying our programs and when discussing how-to exercise in general.
As far as whether or not it reduces injury risk in lifting, there are similar challenges in addressing this question. For example, what exactly is (and isn’t) a warm-up?
To my knowledge, there’s little data showing a reduction in injury risk from most kinds of warm up period. The biggest impacts that a warm-up has is on performance. Some use the RAMP acronym to describe the warm-up’s purported mechanisms: Raise temperature, “Activate” and “Mobilize” key muscles, and Potentiate force production. Meh.
