You may have felt an ache or pain and the first instinct you probably had was to stretch, right?
What if I told you that stretching is *probably* not the answer?
That it might actually be making your pain WORSE?
Hear me out for a minute.
What does stretching do for us?
When you feel pain, sure, stretching might temporarily feel good. It should! Stretching relaxes your nervous system and sends a different input so it can be a temporary distraction from the pain. It hits certain receptors in the area you stretch which then sends a signal to your spinal cord to the brain and may even release endorphins or oxytocin to make you feel good.
But as soon as you stop, the pain comes back!
Why tho?!
Because you still haven’t addressed the reason why the pain is there in the first place. By ignoring this, you continue to do (or not do) the thing that’s making you feel pain – whether it’s from poor movement patterns or body biomechanics, lack of movement, repetitive movement, etc.
So the longer you keep stretching and ignoring the reason you have the pain in the first place, the more that pain will continue to bother you. You will become more and more sensitive to pain, meaning you require less of the thing that causes pain for you to actually feel it.
I’ll also let you in on a little secret – your “tight” muscles might not actually be tight at all. They might be weak which makes them feel tight. This is most likely the case with the typical “tight” muscle. I know it doesn’t make much sense but I promise you that stretching a weak muscle will NOT help in this case. You have to strengthen it if it is weak.
I know you didn’t want to hear it but I can’t keep something this important from you.
What to do instead of stretching
If you start adding strengthening exercises into your routine instead of just stretching, you’ll get better faster and have longer lasting pain relief.
If you are already doing an exercise routine, workout, or getting in any movement that naturally incorporates stretching while ALSO simultaneously stregnthening (my fave is yoga for this), then you likely don’t really ever need to stretch.
Mobility exercises feel like stretching but they are actually adding movement into the joint (because movement comes from joints, not from tight muscles. So if you keep stretching to increase range of motion, you will never achieve it. Stretching a muscle doesn’t change it physiologically so you might temporarily feel an improvement but the reason the muscle is tight (aka protecting your joints or protecting you from further injury) has not been addressed so the muscle will just go right back to the same position as before you stretched it.
Adding gentle movement to the restricted joint which makes you feel like you have tightness in your muscles or like you are stiff or have reduced range of motion. This will increase mobility in your body, help you move freely, and feel less tight.
Did you learn something new? Send me a DM on Instagram here. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
P.S….I never stretch, I mobilize.
Read the Disclaimer here.