Flexibility is an underrated aspect of fitness, especially since we tend to lose some of our mobility as we get older—how many of the older folks in your life can comfortably reach overhead? But whether you’re doing it for lifestyle improvements or athletics, stretching can be boring, and progress can be slow. How do you know if you’re stretching enough? Fortunately, a study has given us some guidelines.
These guidelines are for static stretching, which is the traditional kind where you hold a position. (Other mobility work, including dynamic stretching, is still good for you, but it wasn’t included in this study.)
Stretching has both short-term and long-term effects. We often think of flexibility as a long-term journey (we are becoming a more flexible person over time)—but there is also a more dramatic temporary effect that occurs during and right after the stretching session. Let’s talk about that first.
You may remember that when I did a three-minute video with toe touching exercises, I couldn’t quite touch the ground at the start. By the end, I had my palms flat on the ground. This short-term effect is an excellent way to unlock flexibility that you need to use for a given purpose. For example, dancers will stretch right before a practice or performance. And if you need a little extra ankle mobility to get the most out of your squats, or some extra shoulder mobility to do overhead lifts, that’s a great reason to do some stretches for those body parts in your warmup.
According to the study, you can maximize the short-term benefits of stretching from four total minutes of stretching for that muscle. That doesn’t have to mean a single four-minute stretch; it could be 30 seconds, eight times, or one minute four times. And they don’t have to be the same type of stretch, so long as they hit the same muscle. Less than four minutes will still give you some benefit, but four minutes is the most that the researchers found to help.
For long-term improvement, stretch for 10 minutes per week (per muscle)
If you’re looking to get more flexible in the long term, the number to aim for is 10 minutes, per muscle, per week. Again, this can be broken up. If you have a routine that stretches each muscle for two total minutes (4 sets of 30 seconds, for example), doing that routine five days a week will get you there.
Or perhaps you’re already interested in those short-term benefits I mentioned above, so you’re doing a warmup session that racks up three or four minutes per muscle. Those count toward your ten minutes for the week, so you may not need to do any extra stretching sessions beyond those warmups—as long as those warmups include all the muscles you are targeting.
What do you think so far?
You don’t have to do every stretch in existence; just pick a few muscles or body parts that you’d like to make more flexible. Pick a favorite stretch or two for each, and get into the habit of performing those stretches for a minute each day. Here are some of my favorite stretches to get you started:
Should stretching hurt?
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that stretching is more effective the harder you do it. Stretching doesn’t need to be painful to be effective. The recent study found that hard stretching and gentle stretching both worked about equally well.
Flexibility trainers often say that your best bet is gentle stretching, where you can feel the stretch but it’s not painful. Being gentle about it lets you stretch longer and more often (and enjoy the process more!), which are the factors that really help you to make progress.
