Stretching your performance to the max

To be successful in any sport, athletes need to be able to execute the full ranges of motion required by the sport. If an athlete can’t get into the required positions, or perform the basic maneuvers because of limitations in range of motion, he or she is not going to perform to the max! 

At the same time, athletes need to have enough strength to control the range of motion they do have. If they can’t, they risk injury when they find themselves in extreme ranges of motions. But the importance of strength doesn’t end there. Strength is required to move the body and external objects at high speed and for long periods of time. Possessing strength in critical sport movements is a performance changer.

Strength and stretching interface

It seems pretty straightforward: both range of motion and strength are important for performance. To achieve these outcomes, we can assume that athletes need to stretch to improve range of motion and resistance train to improve strength. And if athletes work on both, they’ll be optimally prepared for competition. But if only it were so simple! Over the last two decades, research has begun to emerge that performing stretching prior to resistance training compromises resistance training performance. Due to the importance strength and power in many sports, this has led to the elimination of stretching protocols from many training programs.

However, stretching remains a viable tool for improving range of motion, and range of motion remains an important part of improving performance. For practitioners and researchers alike, this had created a challenging dilemma; how can athletes achieve both aims if one aspect of training appears to negatively affect the other? Observant coaches and practitioners have also questioned whether it is the placement of stretching that is the problem, or the mere presence of stretching. If it is just the placement of stretching that leads to negative outcomes, simply placing stretching at elsewhere in the program could solve the problem.

New research

To try and find a solution to the above dilemma, new research by a group of Italian researchers has tried to answer these questions(1). In this research, the team of scientists examined all of the previous studies that have investigated the long-term impact of stretching programs on the development of muscular strength. They were particularly interested in studies that assessed muscular strength following stretch training versus no training. They also looked for studies comparing resistance training alone with the combination of resistance training and stretching.

The scientists found 35 studies that met their desired criteria, which together included a total of 1,179 subjects. The training programs in this group of studies lasted between four and 24 weeks, with the average program lasting eight weeks. Training was performed 3-4 times per week, totaling approximately four minutes of stretching per session.

To determine the cumulative findings of these studies, the researchers performed a sophisticated statistical analysis on the data. In particular, they wanted to know the impact of stretching on muscle strength, whether adding stretching to strength training influences strength outcomes, whether the placement of stretching (in relation to strength) influences strength improvements, and whether the duration of a stretching intervention affects strength gains.

What they found

The results were conclusive. Over the longer-term, stretch training has a positive impact on dynamic muscle strength – ie the kind athletes want and need. Moreover, stretching had a neutral effect on isometric (static) strength (see figure 1). Any fears that stretching negatively affects long-term strength can be laid to rest. In terms of the impact of stretch training on resistance training programs, this too proved to a win for stretching. The results found that including stretching in a resistance training program did not adversely affect the development of strength.

Figure 1: Effect of stretching interventions when added to strength training