08/10/2022
Been preaching this for years in the sporting arena, but the message is so slow to get through…
BAD STRETCHING TAKE from a GOOD DOCTOR
A doctor I respect (and won’t publicly shame) fielded a question about stretching… and she just butchered the answer with an overconfident regurgitation of stale fitness and physio tropes dressed up as sensible medical advice. 😬
Underlying all the doctor’s mistakes was the One Stretching Myth To Rule Them All: the assumption that flexibility is a “pillar of fitness,” and stretching is the best/only way to get there. This is particularly wrong (and on a huge scale) for runners.
❝Flexibility has been researched for over 100 years. Its track record is unimpressive, particularly when viewed in light of other components of physical fitness. Flexibility lacks predictive and concurrent validity value with meaningful health and performance outcomes. Consequently, [STRETCHING] SHOULD BE RETIRED AS A MAJOR COMPONENT OF FITNESS.❞ ~ James Nuzzo, PhD, exercise scientist, journal of Sports Medicine, 2020
I really do like this doctor and trust her views on other medical topics. And yet, despite her ignorance of flexibility physiology — and likely much else about musculoskeletal medicine, a common limitation — she chose to talk it up anyway. That is surprisingly easy to do when you have no idea what you don’t know! Anyone can screw up like this. The easiest way to avoid it? Stay in your lane! Stick to what you DO know, as best you can.
I recently added a bunch of new images to my (free) stretch-debunking book, breaking up “walls of text” and boosting its readability. See:
PainScience.com/stretching_hype_debunked
~ Paul Ingraham, PainScience.com publisher
