Stretching

Stretching:

Im sure most people reading this do some form of stretching on a regular basis, whether during warm ups, cool downs, or maybe in front of the TV at night, however I often get asked what kind of stretching is best for runners, how much they should do etc… There is lots of varied advice regarding stretching, but I will try to keep this specific to running, and particularly endurance running.

A lot of runners have a tendency to do a lot of flexibility work on one particular area,calves being a very popular one, but then neglect other muscle groups, saying“its only my calves that get tight” However there are two reasons why this can be less effective, the first being that without targeting the flexibility of other muscle groups, you fail to address other problems that are contributing to specific tightness in the first place. In the above example it may be that stiffness around the lumbar spine could be contributing to chronic tightness in the calves.

The other reason this specific stretching of one muscle group can be a problem is because it is done spontaneously and may only last 2-3 minutes, some times less. This gives no time to increase the blood supply or to warm the tissue up at all, so the length reached during the stretch, and therefore the overall lengthening effect are both minimised. However, if you were spend 20-30 minutes stretching a variety of muscle groups, the overall lengthening effect on all of those muscle groups would be increased. The same goes for during a warm up, although the desired effect may not be lengthening this time, and the stretches may be completely different, the warm up effect would be increased if all the major running muscle groups were targeted rather than just the calves or glutes.

Many athletes use stretching along side other techniques such as foam trolling for injury prevention. A review of the literature around this subject by McHughand Cosgrave (2009) found that stretching, done separately from warm ups and training, in specific stretching bouts, has been shown to decrease the incidence of muscle tears when training. They also found, however, that short static stretches as part of a warm up, have no correlation to the incidence of overuse injuries at all. In fact, at distances of 1500m and less, there is a lot of evidence to support no static stretches during a warm up at all. This is because, in the short term, static stretching reduces the compliance of the muscle tendon unit. It is less significant in longer distances such as 5km and above though as a compliant muscle tendon unit is of less importance in these events, due to their more aerobic/endurance based nature.

Taking this into account, it would be advisable for endurance runners to spend around 20 minutes a day working on general flexibility of all major muscle groups including, gluteals, quadriceps, hamstrings, adductors, calves and the lower back. When doing this kind of stretching session, 30 seconds and above for each stretch will help encourage as much lengthening as possible. Example stretches may include: