May 8, 2024 • 32 mins
Ever felt like stretching might just be an overhyped ritual in your workout routine? Join us as we unravel the complex truth behind stretching, debunking myths and shining light on its real role in pain relief, flexibility, and injury prevention. We dissect the body's response to being stretched and how an increase in tolerance might be misconstrued as enhanced mobility. Our conversation is a dose of reality, backed by scientific research and clinical experience, cutting through the noise to deliver insights that might just make you reconsider everything you thought you knew about stretching.
It's time to challenge the status quo. We share personal stories and professional observations that throw conventional wisdom for a loop—like why stretching might not be the answer to your IT band syndrome or why your chiropractic treatment isn't the magic bullet you thought it was. We emphasize the power of a treatment tailored to the individual, citing real-world examples where generic approaches fall short. Listen in as we advocate for a smarter, more strategic path to wellness that looks beyond the tired routines and questions the necessity of pre-run stretches or the routine application of certain treatments.
Lastly, we tackle the broad and enigmatic concepts of recovery and fitness plateaus. Why do we hit these walls in our fitness journeys, and how can we push past them? We discuss the evolution of personal exercise routines and the challenge of defining what recovery really looks like, all while keeping a light-hearted eye on the sometimes absurd world of social media fitness trends. Whether you're a dedicated athlete or just starting out, this episode promises to arm you with a fresh perspective that goes beyond the gym and into a more informed approach to overall well-being. Get ready to engage, laugh, and maybe even confront a few fitness demons along the way.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the GFY podcast, a podcast by healthcare
professionals providing insighton how to navigate your health
so that you can go fix yourself.
The GFY podcast is hosted byMike Bruno, a chiropractor and
athletic trainer, and yourstruly, michael Stant, an
athletic trainer and certifiedstrength conditioning specialist
.
Although we are healthcareproviders, we are not your
healthcare provider.
We will discuss general healthinterventions in this podcast,
(00:22):
but you should not take that ashealth advice that works in
every situation.
Before doing anything on yourown or making any lifestyle
changes, please consult withyour own physician.
This podcast and views fromthis podcast are separate from
our full-time jobs and our ownopinions.
And Bruno, I don't know why wehaven't talked about this before
, but Bruno made a post aboutstretching.
(00:43):
But Bruno made a made a postabout stretching and got some
some social media whiplash, andso you know, maybe I'll give
Bruno a chance to defend himselfon what he actually meant,
which could be exactly what hesaid on on social media, or
(01:05):
maybe he meant something alittle different, but either way
, today's topic is aboutstretching and, like I said, I
don't know how we never cameabout this before, because I
think we discussed it.
Maybe we briefed over in a lotof things and you know it's
probably like the most popularway general people think about
injury prevention or anytimethey have pain.
The general solution is I'lljust stretch it um, but I think
me and you both know one.
(01:26):
That can't be the entire story,but for some people it is.
So you know how about you giveus your views on stretching?
Speaker 2 (01:35):
stretching is stupid.
No, I'm just kidding.
That's.
That is what the.
I guess that's how I came offon instagram based on the
backlash, but I don't feel thatway at all.
If you love stretching, I lovethat for you.
If it works for you, that'sfantastic.
I want to be as crystal clearas I possibly can be when I'm
(01:58):
making I'm talking to a certainaudience when I'm talking about
this kind of stuff.
So, like the people who areusing stretching from like a
clinical perspective, the peoplewho like stretching on their
own, all of that stuff, I am nottalking to you.
Like you, I completely respectwhat you do and if it works for
you and like all that fun stuff,let's just get that out of the
(02:20):
way right now.
Um, but the original post forcontext.
For anyone who's super curious,what I should probably just
read it right yeah, straight up.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Okay, yeah, I don't, I don't want you to uh maximize
yourself by accident all right.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
So the post said what does stretching actually do?
And it was just like a posedquestion.
And then my comment section.
I was like the most recent.
The most current researchsuggests stretching only
improves your ability totolerate a stretch.
Is that your goal?
Awesome, go nuts.
Is your goal?
Pain relief, more flexibility?
(02:59):
Something else, you might wantto use a different tool.
So when I'm speaking to a blankslate, like someone who, like
doesn't necessarily hasn't triedanything right, all options are
on the table.
What that post was meant totarget audience, I guess, would
(03:20):
be the people who have triedstretching and they're like, huh
, like they.
Someone told me stretching isgood for pain relief.
Someone told me stretching isgood for mobility.
Like I did it and I don't haveany results.
Like what the hell's going on?
Like it doesn't necessarilymean like stretching doesn't
work for you.
It just means that, like whatyou were doing and again we
(03:42):
should probably start here, likein, I'm doing air quotes for
all you listening is a term thatis very over generalized, so
let's define it first before wego any further, because I feel
like we'll get stuck in a rabbithole.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Yeah, that's a good idea.
So right, maybe.
So I define stretching asholding a certain position of
your joint or a muscle, puttingit to the end range and holding
it at that end range for at whatshould be at least 90 to 120
seconds.
That can be broken up in setsright, so like this so it's like
(04:23):
a long hold kind of thing right.
We just got the, we're in oneposition and we're holding that
position for a good chunk oftime, you know right, think
about staying straight up andyou just reach for your toes and
you hang out there for a longtime yep, so that is what we are
calling for the context of thispodcast, that's what we are
calling stretching.
(04:43):
Cool Stretching yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I think we're in agreement there.
So when someone was in theposition of trying to stretch
their hamstring, so like,holding that hamstring stretch,
they feel it in their hamstring.
They're holding that positionfor a long time, Right, the what
I was saying there was the thechange that you feel is your
(05:14):
body accommodating to thatposition and you're improving
your tolerance to that position.
So like, hey, this feels likecrap when I start it and then 90
to 120 seconds later it feelsless crappy.
Would you agree with that?
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Yeah, I agree with that and you know, because I am
who I am, I do my research onsome of this stuff and you know
a lot of the benefits fromstretching from what I was
reading.
So I looked up a systematicreview 2021, effects of acute
and chronic stretching on paincontrol and pretty much the
lasting mechanism for stretchinglike it's not so much.
(05:50):
Right, you didn't increase therange of motion and that's why
the pain went away, kind of likeyou're saying it's your body
adapting to it, right?
Um, you know, you could eithercall it the gate control theory
of pain, which is one of those,or another one's just called
diffuse, noxious, inhibitorycontrol theory, which
essentially is just like it'sexactly as you say it.
(06:10):
Okay, your body, you stretchout, out my, your body's gonna
send you know, differentimpulses, throw some beta
endorphins in there so youtolerate the stretch a little
bit more, you get a little bitfurther and that's why you feel
the relief.
Um, and obviously and I think wegotta back in these are for
people who don't have acuteinjuries.
Surgeries, like we're talkingabout, the people who feel this
(06:33):
are like your chronic painpeople, and so that's kind of
how more so this works, becauseright at the end of the day, if
you have a surgery or an injuryand you know you're gonna lose
range, range of motion.
You're probably gonna do sometype of stretch to get that
range of motion back, because weknow that's gonna help prevent
injury down the line so withlike going going off of that,
(06:54):
there was uh.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
So someone in the in my comment section was like, hey
, like, no disrespect, like youropinions, your opinion.
But check out this guy who'sgot a bazillion followers on
Instagram.
He's called I can't remember,it's like Stretch, flexibility
Research or something like that,and he will review studies and
take the important pieces andpost them and everyone he's got
(07:20):
a million of them.
But everyone that I looked atsupported what I said in my head
.
So the, the, the clarity of mypost wasn't well received, right
, but the people who are in thecamp like the one that really
pops into my head was they tookdancers.
So when you think flexibility,right, dancers, they need it,
(07:43):
gymnasts, all that type of stuff, like they are very flexible,
you take them, compared to acontrol group of people who are
non-dancers and you put themthrough a flexibility stretching
program and there was no, uhdifference in range of motion or
pain relief.
I believe were the two thingsthat they were looking at when
(08:05):
put on a strict like stretchingprotocol.
So like is stretching of usefultool sometimes, but the problem
with it is because it is ageneralized term, it gets
over-promised andunder-delivered.
Same thing, dude, I make thesame comments at chiropractors
(08:26):
all the time with adjustments.
If I'm like, hey, adjustmentsare stupid, it gets people to
click on your Instagram a littlebit more.
The adjustments are somethingthat I don't use as often as a
typical chiropractor would,because they're only useful in
certain situations.
Same thing with stretching.
Same thing with stretching.
Same thing with anything rightLike strengthening is not
(08:49):
necessarily useful everywhere.
Like I've heard the you can'tgo wrong getting strong
mentality.
Have you heard that before?
Speaker 1 (08:57):
I mean, I've heard, tight and strong is better than
weak and flexible too.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Right.
So these are.
These are.
These are comments that havevalue, but they they're so
context dependent.
That perfect example is I havea client who he came in for like
our consultation and was like Ilike what you're doing, but I
want to do stuff on my own.
(09:23):
And I was like, okay, no harm,no foul.
And he went and was doing allthe strengthening and the
stretching and like things thathe found on YouTube and you know
, like look stuff up himself andlike did his own research.
And I touched base with himagain a couple of months later
and he was like I'm I triedevery like I don't know what
else to do, like I've tried allof the things, um, and I've
(09:44):
given them enough time that like, like should work.
But I'm hitting a plateau.
And I said that that's verynormal, considering that you are
just doing a general thing fora specific problem.
So the fact that if you, if youtake a shotgun approach and
it's like hey, hamstring,stretch, and you like shoot it
at 100 people, 10 people areprobably going to get great
(10:05):
benefit from it, right, but whatabout the other 90?
So he was, he was in that boatwhere we had the.
We had that conversation againmonths later and where your pain
is, it's usually not where yourproblem is.
So after going into thatassessment we realized what we
had to manage and work on and hewas just surfing for the first
(10:26):
time in years without shoulderpain.
So like that was sweet, awesome.
I didn't do anything superspectacular, we just looked
outside of the conventionalrealm like if, what if?
what you're doing.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
If, if what everybody else is doing isn't working for
you, do something differentyeah, and while stretching all
right, I'll go real into itstretching can get quite
dangerous and the people thatkeep doing it because they feel
like it gets them that painrelief kind of how we talk about
what happens, your bodyrealizing it.
But if they're actually hypermobile already and, like you
(11:00):
know, maybe you don't you're notgoing to see that in your
general everyday person, whoprobably just lifts weights
generally, but you might seethat in Olympic weightlifter, a
CrossFitter, in your world.
For me it's baseball athletes,it's it's tennis swim.
It's these people that needhyper range of motion, because
that's that's when you kind ofstart getting in trouble, where
it's like, okay, um, I'm goingto keep stretching my shoulder,
(11:25):
even though if I probably tooktheir range of motion, they
might have 200 total degrees ofrange of motion and shoulder
when it should be 180, um, andthat's when you start going,
okay, yeah, why you don't need astretch, you got too much range
, but we need to stop.
You need to stop.
We need to provide all all thestability possible to stop you
from uh, to at least try tostrengthen that range of motion
(11:47):
uh that you have, or thatexcessive range of motion that
you have.
So I mean it can definitely gocompletely in the opposite
direction if someone hangs on toit too long, depending on their
previous history, what thingsthey were involved in and things
like that yeah, from a verylike zoomed out perspective.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
I think that's even a bigger problem is people don't
understand why they'restretching in the first place.
You know, if they have all the,the right information, that's
going to be like specific tothem.
They might not choose to do it,you know.
Or if they just got blindadvice from someone, it's like
(12:26):
oh, my back hurts, I'll stretchit.
It's like I don't even knowwhat stretching means in that
context.
Like what do you mean?
Stretching can have a bunch ofdifferent names.
You can hire someone to stretchyou, you can stretch yourself,
you can use a band, you can do abazillion, you can do it fast,
you can do it slow, you can doit long, you can do it short.
There's so many like ways.
So just saying like stretchingis good or stretching is bad,
(12:48):
neither of those things areright, you know now.
So there is like that's aanother chunk of it, because
people get very like tied tocertain modalities or like
things that they see resultswith.
It's like, hey, I got a lot ofresults with stretching, so I
(13:11):
became like a stretch therapistand like I'm going to do
stretching with everybodybecause that's what I do and if
stretching isn't, the isn'tgoing to work for a certain
amount of the population thatlike walks in my door, like
that's OK, they need somethingelse, right.
But if someone's like on theother camp, if someone's like
(13:32):
coming from the other side andsaying, hey, like when you're
trying, like when you're goingthrough, stretching the people
that it works for, fantastic,the people that it doesn't work
for, like why, like what it likewhere?
Like what have?
What more do we have to lookinto?
Speaker 1 (13:49):
you know, well, I think even like how we know how
the mechanism works, right, it'sall pain control theory, so
like, at the end of the day,you're not actually correcting
the issue, uh, most of the time.
So that's that's kind of like.
Just, we know that's going tobe through.
It's just your body kind oftelling itself all right, I'm
going to tolerate this stretch alittle bit better.
Um, so we know we didn'tactually solve okay.
(14:10):
So why are you having thathamstring pain?
Is it more so something you'redoing every day?
Is it how you're lifting?
Is it you're lifting too much,things like that?
And I, I mean obviously I.
I go anecdotal on this becauseI'll be perfectly honest, me
personally, I don't even stretchat all, never like, like, even
even when, um, like I'll, I'llhave some'm like all right,
(14:34):
maybe I should do some of thesestretches.
Like I had IT band syndrome andso I was like all right, I'm
going to you know, work on myTFL, my glutes, I'm going to
stretch these out, blah, blah,blah.
It didn't do anything, it was awaste.
It was a waste of time.
It like felt like, and whateveryone gets like, oh, like
(14:57):
kind of feels good now becauseit probably maybe was something
going on there, but then itquickly went away.
What helped me in thosesituations I was doing?
I was doing weighted step upsand things like that to kind of
work on like the range of motionand strengthening my knee in
that specific uh range, and thatwas fine when people get tied
to like one thing and they thinkit's the only thing.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
When every, if you only have a hammer, everything
looks like a nail.
So chiros fall into that trapall the time.
Where oh, my back hurtsadjustment.
Oh, I have an ear infection.
Adjustment, oh, like my, mykid's goldfish is sick
adjustment.
If you're spraying that atpeople for everything you might
(15:32):
have, you'll have a camp ofpeople who are like this is the
greatest thing ever.
You'll have a camp of peoplewho are like eh, it's kind of
okay, it's like it kind of works, like I kind of feel good.
And then you have a camp ofpeople who are like that's not
helpful, off, like that is thesolution that works for you.
(15:55):
I respect that.
Go, do that.
The rest of you.
We have to have a deeperconversation, and those are the
people who I'm talking to,because most of my clients have
never or have tried other stuff.
I've tried stretching, I'vetried going to the chiropractor,
I've tried physical therapy,I've tried strengthening, like
same kind of thing, whateverthat means, and I have no
(16:15):
results.
So why is it not working?
What is the root cause of theproblem?
Where are we actually going toget results from?
Are the conversations that I'mhaving with people.
So it just goes a couple layersdeeper, yeah, and go ahead,
okay.
One more thought so when thewhen I'm having the conversation
with people about stretching,so like that's the whole thing,
(16:38):
like they'll come in and, oh, sothis, this is really who I made
it for a specific client, right, he, he was the inception of
this, so comes in pretty new toa plan of care, and I was like
what are you doing before yourruns?
Because that's like the mainissue.
He's like ah, I'm doing somestretching.
(17:02):
I was like okay, how's thatworking for you?
He's like, eh, like I feel likekind of good.
And I was like, okay, like whatstretches are you doing?
And then he like demonstratedus like a basic hamstring
stretch and I said, okay, likeis that that's?
Is that working for you?
He's like not really.
I'm like okay, so why are youdoing it?
(17:22):
And he like didn't have ananswer.
He's like oh, I got, I thinkI'm just supposed to stretch
more.
It's like why, you know?
He's like yeah, I really don'tknow.
And like that's just a hugewaste of time because, like, the
guy doesn't like stretching,he's not getting results from
stretching and he still feelslike he has to do it.
(17:43):
So that whole line of thoughtis we have to break the belief
that he quote-unquote has to dostretching.
I tell people that all the time,with like mobility routines too
.
If you're spending an hourbefore your workout to do
stretching, I tell people thatall the time, with like mobility
routines too, if you'respending an hour before your
workout to do a mobility routine, that's not really getting you
the results that you want in thegym.
It's probably because somethingin the gym itself your exercise
(18:04):
selection is doing more harmthan good, which is requiring
you, which is making you feellike shit, which is making you
feel like you have to do amobility routine.
But then you go back in and dothe same shit that makes you
feel like shit and you get stuckin this big cycle.
So it's like why don't wechange the shit that makes you
feel like shit so you actuallyfeel good, so you don't need a
(18:25):
mobility routine in the firstplace?
How does that sound?
And they're like that's anoption and I'm like, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
So it's, it's the education piece too.
I, I think that's big.
Or like so many people juststretch it, they just go.
I, I don't know.
It's because I don't know,maybe we got to go change the
curriculum all the way down tofreaking pe and uh middle school
and in high school to be likehey, like, obviously stretching
is a thing, but you know, itmight just be easier to teach
someone how to do a warm-upprior to be like hey, like,
obviously stretching is a thing,but you know it might just be
easier to teach someone how todo a warm-up prior to everything
(18:56):
.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Like my yeah, my biggest issue is the intent
behind it so like if you arelike, if you've taken a bunch of
like continuing educationcourses with like stretching and
you're like you know whatyou're doing, you know when it
is appropriate, you know whenit's not, and you're talking to
a person and they are a good fitfor what you do and you do it.
You get them results.
That's amazing.
I want to give you a hug, likethat's phenomenal.
(19:19):
But when people have no fuckingidea what they're doing and why
they're doing it and they'reokay, like.
They're like weirdly okay withthat.
They're like I just know I needto stretch more.
I'm, like you, sure about that.
You know, are you?
sure about that you sure aboutthat?
Speaker 1 (19:36):
it's probably not the case.
Like, and obviously, like wesaid, there's different
situations.
Me with the baseball background, right, I know one.
One of the things that we lookfor is, you know, all right, if
they've lost internal rotationafter throwing, it's something
that's not the whole picture fora baseball athlete, but hey, we
still need to address thatbecause if they don't have in
all the internal rotation theyneed while throwing in their
(19:56):
shoulder, that means you knowthey're going to be slamming the
brakes on it, the muscle is notgoing to be able to activate
properly to slow them down therotator cuff and so like in that
population it makes sense andyou know there's a lot of
education to it.
Like I used to work.
That it's.
I think it's like hey, this iswhy we're doing this stretch,
it's because I want to trackyour range of motion to make
sure that it gets better beforeyou do a high intent throwing
(20:17):
day again and so like.
Right there, like you said,there needs to be a reason
behind it.
Just stretching the stretch,that's, that's how I.
Honestly, it's how you get introuble, that's how you, that's
how they end up.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
I avoid blanket terms at all costs.
So, stretching flexibility,mobility, like recovery.
What does that mean?
Like if you say recovery, I sayrecovery and Joe Schmo says it.
They all mean different thingsto us.
So if I'm having thatconversation and we get to, it's
(20:58):
like okay, we agree on terms,now we can move forward with the
conversation, great.
But if we're just like throwingbuzzwords out there because
there truly is no deeperunderstanding past that, then
that's an issue.
Then you're operating out of aplace.
You're operating out of a placeof ignorance, which is not
(21:20):
always your fault.
It's like you don't know whatyou don't know.
So like once you're open to, aslong as you're open-minded, and
you're like, hey, like thismight not be what you think it
is, and you, and if you're justlike, no, fuck, you like no,
like I believe this and likethat's what it is, then you're
gonna be stuck there, you know,and you're gonna be no, fuck you
like, no, like I believe thisand like that's what it is, then
you're gonna be stuck there,you know, and you're gonna be
(21:41):
having that back pain, trying tostretch your hamstrings for 10
years and it's never gonna work.
But if you're open to the ideaof like hey, if you have a tight
like rubber band and you'restretching it out all the way to
the end, right, and it isfeeling real tight, why would
stretching it even more providerelief?
Speaker 1 (22:01):
yeah, that's the comment.
You know that's uh, the I goback to like back in school in
the original one of the originalbooks I read um, I got some
here somewhere, but you knowthat was like.
The initial thing it talkedabout was like the hamstring
like and being like.
Why do we keep stretchinghamstrings, like it's already in
a lengthened position in mostpeople?
Because most people end upsuper tilted, because it's just
(22:24):
what people started going for toimprove performance, so why are
we going to keep addressing itthat way?
Speaker 2 (22:31):
so the the goal.
Like when I have people whocome in and they have it.
This is another thing.
Someone can two differentpeople who come in and they have
.
This is another thing.
Someone can two differentpeople can come in and be like I
have tight hamstrings, likethey feel tight.
That is always valid what youare feeling.
I'm always going to respectthat.
But you go and you put them ona table and you do the test for,
like the straight leg raise tosee their hamstring range of
(22:54):
motion and some of them havelike super limited range of
motion and then some of themhave super flexible, like a lot
of range of motion, but theyboth feel tight.
Why?
And if the person who's like,oh, tight hamstrings, stretch
right, that could work for oneof them and it could make the
(23:14):
other one no change or worse.
So why is that blanketstatement useful?
Like I don't agree with thatcontext is so dependent.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Yeah, I've seen that situation to.
You know the person thatactually has the limited range
of motion.
Even then you might actuallywork more on pelvis and like
just getting their pelvis tomove in a project that's going
to get it to work a little bitbetter, where the other person
who you described as hypermobileyou're probably going we need
to stabilize this Like that'sgoing to do a better job at your
(23:45):
sensations than just stretch,stretch, stretch, because if you
just keep stretch, stretch,stretch, you're just kind of
tapping into your body's way toalter pain as opposed to fixing
the problem.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Yeah, people with the same complaint need two
entirely different plans yeah,because of what you find, you
know yeah, but um, there's,there's something that you you
just said there.
That kind of like sparked awhole rabbit hole with the with
um, with the whole likestretching thing that the like
(24:19):
we're not.
I feel like the bigger part ofthe conversation is like
nobody's mad at stretching likewe clearly defined it.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
I could be upset at it.
Yeah, you pissed no.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Yes, no, not as you are, I'm gonna take it to a
lobster dinner and never call itagain.
But the thing is is likeeverything.
One of my mentors says this andI love it when he does.
He's like everything is wrong.
Some things are useful.
I'm like I agree with that.
(24:51):
Yeah, because stretching mightbe the key to this person.
Stability might be the key tothat person.
Adjustments might be the key tothat person, might be the key
to that person, the adjustmentsmight be the key to that person.
A combination of both rightgoing to therapy and just
talking out your feelings mightbe either.
So pain is so complex.
So saying like I avoidpractitioners who are like this
(25:18):
is good for everybody, becauseit's not.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Except for sleep.
You get to sleep that stuff,that stuff.
If they're preaching that,they're probably correct, but
yeah, from our physical, what weactually end up incorporating
to most people, yeah, that'sover.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
But let me just poke the bear a little bit more.
What if you're sleeping 20hours a day and you're super
depressed and you're not goingto work?
You know what I mean that's toomuch yeah, there's a balance
like exactly that.
That is the.
That is the.
That is the piece that ismissing with all of these
conversations, right?
Speaker 1 (25:56):
nothing is good for everybody yeah in my opinion no,
I, I agree, everyone like, andwe've seen it before, like and
we've done it before, we'vegiven someone stretches to do
and bada bing, bada, boom, theygot better and you're like all
right yeah, awesome, great, thatwas a good day.
(26:19):
I still give stretches tocertain people, like you know,
like I still do it because youknow I deal with a high school
athlete population who gets weget into the.
They actually don't know whatstretching is sometimes.
So there's a big, a wholeeducation moment and just like
which is awesome, yeah.
So you know, I kind of get tostart from the ground up a lot
(26:42):
of times on these kids, if, if,there's enough time.
So yeah, I still still placefor it.
There's a balance different shitexists because different shit
works for different people yeah,but I think for I think it all
depends on your population thatyou see, like right for you, a
lot of times you're seeingpeople after they've already
tried it and it doesn't work.
So, like that's what somepeople need to realize with that
(27:06):
as well, and like you said whywe started this episode.
Going back to your post likeright, your post wasn't meant
for people who had acuteinjuries.
Like you know, everyone's anathlete, but athlete but you
know, not for, like sports,specific athletes, things like
that.
That's not who that wastargeted at.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
And it also wasn't meant for people who like, like
stretching.
So like, if you like stretching, you just, you just go, like
this and you don't listen to me.
You just scroll right by.
And that's what most people did.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
But you know, you know I go through.
Obviously.
You know I had I looked up abunch of research before this.
So I'm going to run through thelist real quick, because that's
what I think a lot of times.
To the people that just go,nope, stretching works, fuck off
Like I'm not, you can't changemy opinion.
They also just don't go intodifferent results.
Or, you know, dig down deepenough to find out why the
(27:56):
interventions are working.
Dig down deep enough to findout why the interventions are
working.
So I went all the way back to2003 on a systematic review, as
even back then for stretchingfor prevention of injuries,
results were mixed.
It was like half the studieshelped, half the studies didn't.
So right from an injuryprevention standpoint, not doing
too much.
2008 systematic review moderateto strong evidence that routine
static stretching does notreduce overall injury rates, but
(28:18):
it does.
Stretching does seem to dosomething at the
musculotendinous junction andmight help with that, because
that seems to be the only partof the muscle that it might
actually help lengthen.
Um, so there's another study inhere where, because of that,
it's actually kind of good foruh fall risk that it ends up
actually decrease.
It helps with balance anddecreasing the risk of falls in
(28:41):
older population.
So you could generally say, okay, there is something good, good
about it in that aspect to applyto more people generally, but
you know, that's probably forpeople who are pain-free, no
issues.
Um, you know that everythingelse is just like no effect.
No effect, no effect on injuryrates.
(29:02):
No, like nothing, like anythingafter like 2014.
It's.
It's just like no, doesn't,doesn't do what you think it
does in injury prevention orright injury rehabilitation or
anything like that yeah, so likethat, let's like circle back to
the post right and also asterixright, confirmation bias is a
(29:22):
real thing.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
So like, if you really want to find studies that
are going to support yourclaims, you can right like the
world of research.
It's known for that right.
Yeah, so going into theresearch with a very unbiased
view and being like all right,let's look at a bulk of it.
What's it saying?
And like now, we find a commontheme without formulating an
opinion prior.
I respect you.
(29:44):
That's a good way to go, yeah,yeah but going back to like what
I said, like the most currentresearch suggests right, like
you, you just confirmedeverything that I said.
Well, so the the point?
The point of that is like hey,johnny, why are you doing your
hamstring stretch?
It's like, oh, I don't know,like to increase flexibility or
(30:08):
to like decrease pain.
I think it's like, hmm, is itworking?
No, not really.
It's like you might want to,you might want to try something
else, because stretching is notdoing what you think it's doing.
But then if you have aconversation with Johnny, it's
like hey, you, or Sally, you,you you're stretching.
He's like, yeah, it's fantastic.
(30:30):
Like I feel so good after Istretch and it it's the best.
Like I feel so recovered, I'mlike ready to rock, like it's a
huge part of my life.
Sally man, fucking tastic, youdo your thing.
I'm not going to try to telllike.
I'm not going to tell thatperson no.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Well, it's funny.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Stretching seems to be one of those things too.
It's like if it worked one time, I feel like people are more
apt to just put it into theirgeneral routines as well, and
maybe that's part of the issue.
Um, so, maybe it did helpinitially and then they just
keep doing it because it's likewell, it worked that one time a
lot of things have a plateaueffect.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
Like if you curl your 20 pound dumbbells, like
eventually that's gonna get easy.
If you only run a mile, that'seventually gonna get easy.
So like they're yeah, runningis a whole different beast.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
We should have a podcast on that running or uh, I
was saying even after this,when you talked about the
buzzwords recovery, I was like Idon't know, we haven't actually
ever had a what is recoverypodcast and like defining that
for people, because that is thatgets.
That's all over the place andwe probably technically can't
define it, um, because it's toomultifaceted.
(31:45):
But you can at least give wecould at least give tools on
like what you should be lookingfor 100.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
All right, but I think that wraps it up.
I feel like I just went totherapy and got it all off my
chest.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
All right, now go make another controversial post.
Oh yeah, Give it some fodder.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Dude, they say you're not doing Instagram right until
you start getting haters.
So I guess that's a win.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
There you go.
First couple of haters.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Yeah, right, all right, mikey, take us out, yay.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Go fix yourself.
Welcome to the GFY podcast, a podcast by healthcare
professionals providing insighton how to navigate your health
so that you can go fix yourself.
The GFY podcast is hosted byMike Bruno, a chiropractor and
athletic trainer, and yourstruly, michael Stant, an
athletic trainer and certifiedstrength conditioning specialist
.
Although we are healthcareproviders, we are not your
healthcare provider.
We will discuss general healthinterventions in this podcast,
(00:22):
but you should not take that ashealth advice that works in
every situation.
Before doing anything on yourown or making any lifestyle
changes, please consult withyour own physician.
This podcast and views fromthis podcast are separate from
our full-time jobs and our ownopinions.
And Bruno, I don't know why wehaven't talked about this before
, but Bruno made a post aboutstretching.
(00:43):
But Bruno made a made a postabout stretching and got some
some social media whiplash, andso you know, maybe I'll give
Bruno a chance to defend himselfon what he actually meant,
which could be exactly what hesaid on on social media, or
(01:05):
maybe he meant something alittle different, but either way
, today's topic is aboutstretching and, like I said, I
don't know how we never cameabout this before, because I
think we discussed it.
Maybe we briefed over in a lotof things and you know it's
probably like the most popularway general people think about
injury prevention or anytimethey have pain.
The general solution is I'lljust stretch it um, but I think
me and you both know one.
(01:26):
That can't be the entire story,but for some people it is.
So you know how about you giveus your views on stretching?
Speaker 2 (01:35):
stretching is stupid.
No, I'm just kidding.
That's.
That is what the.
I guess that's how I came offon instagram based on the
backlash, but I don't feel thatway at all.
If you love stretching, I lovethat for you.
If it works for you, that'sfantastic.
I want to be as crystal clearas I possibly can be when I'm
(01:58):
making I'm talking to a certainaudience when I'm talking about
this kind of stuff.
So, like the people who areusing stretching from like a
clinical perspective, the peoplewho like stretching on their
own, all of that stuff, I am nottalking to you.
Like you, I completely respectwhat you do and if it works for
you and like all that fun stuff,let's just get that out of the
(02:20):
way right now.
Um, but the original post forcontext.
For anyone who's super curious,what I should probably just
read it right yeah, straight up.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Okay, yeah, I don't, I don't want you to uh maximize
yourself by accident all right.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
So the post said what does stretching actually do?
And it was just like a posedquestion.
And then my comment section.
I was like the most recent.
The most current researchsuggests stretching only
improves your ability totolerate a stretch.
Is that your goal?
Awesome, go nuts.
Is your goal?
Pain relief, more flexibility?
(02:59):
Something else, you might wantto use a different tool.
So when I'm speaking to a blankslate, like someone who, like
doesn't necessarily hasn't triedanything right, all options are
on the table.
What that post was meant totarget audience, I guess, would
(03:20):
be the people who have triedstretching and they're like, huh
, like they.
Someone told me stretching isgood for pain relief.
Someone told me stretching isgood for mobility.
Like I did it and I don't haveany results.
Like what the hell's going on?
Like it doesn't necessarilymean like stretching doesn't
work for you.
It just means that, like whatyou were doing and again we
(03:42):
should probably start here, likein, I'm doing air quotes for
all you listening is a term thatis very over generalized, so
let's define it first before wego any further, because I feel
like we'll get stuck in a rabbithole.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Yeah, that's a good idea.
So right, maybe.
So I define stretching asholding a certain position of
your joint or a muscle, puttingit to the end range and holding
it at that end range for at whatshould be at least 90 to 120
seconds.
That can be broken up in setsright, so like this so it's like
(04:23):
a long hold kind of thing right.
We just got the, we're in oneposition and we're holding that
position for a good chunk oftime, you know right, think
about staying straight up andyou just reach for your toes and
you hang out there for a longtime yep, so that is what we are
calling for the context of thispodcast, that's what we are
calling stretching.
(04:43):
Cool Stretching yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I think we're in agreement there.
So when someone was in theposition of trying to stretch
their hamstring, so like,holding that hamstring stretch,
they feel it in their hamstring.
They're holding that positionfor a long time, Right, the what
I was saying there was the thechange that you feel is your
(05:14):
body accommodating to thatposition and you're improving
your tolerance to that position.
So like, hey, this feels likecrap when I start it and then 90
to 120 seconds later it feelsless crappy.
Would you agree with that?
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Yeah, I agree with that and you know, because I am
who I am, I do my research onsome of this stuff and you know
a lot of the benefits fromstretching from what I was
reading.
So I looked up a systematicreview 2021, effects of acute
and chronic stretching on paincontrol and pretty much the
lasting mechanism for stretchinglike it's not so much.
(05:50):
Right, you didn't increase therange of motion and that's why
the pain went away, kind of likeyou're saying it's your body
adapting to it, right?
Um, you know, you could eithercall it the gate control theory
of pain, which is one of those,or another one's just called
diffuse, noxious, inhibitorycontrol theory, which
essentially is just like it'sexactly as you say it.
(06:10):
Okay, your body, you stretchout, out my, your body's gonna
send you know, differentimpulses, throw some beta
endorphins in there so youtolerate the stretch a little
bit more, you get a little bitfurther and that's why you feel
the relief.
Um, and obviously and I think wegotta back in these are for
people who don't have acuteinjuries.
Surgeries, like we're talkingabout, the people who feel this
(06:33):
are like your chronic painpeople, and so that's kind of
how more so this works, becauseright at the end of the day, if
you have a surgery or an injuryand you know you're gonna lose
range, range of motion.
You're probably gonna do sometype of stretch to get that
range of motion back, because weknow that's gonna help prevent
injury down the line so withlike going going off of that,
(06:54):
there was uh.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
So someone in the in my comment section was like, hey
, like, no disrespect, like youropinions, your opinion.
But check out this guy who'sgot a bazillion followers on
Instagram.
He's called I can't remember,it's like Stretch, flexibility
Research or something like that,and he will review studies and
take the important pieces andpost them and everyone he's got
(07:20):
a million of them.
But everyone that I looked atsupported what I said in my head
.
So the, the, the clarity of mypost wasn't well received, right
, but the people who are in thecamp like the one that really
pops into my head was they tookdancers.
So when you think flexibility,right, dancers, they need it,
(07:43):
gymnasts, all that type of stuff, like they are very flexible,
you take them, compared to acontrol group of people who are
non-dancers and you put themthrough a flexibility stretching
program and there was no, uhdifference in range of motion or
pain relief.
I believe were the two thingsthat they were looking at when
(08:05):
put on a strict like stretchingprotocol.
So like is stretching of usefultool sometimes, but the problem
with it is because it is ageneralized term, it gets
over-promised andunder-delivered.
Same thing, dude, I make thesame comments at chiropractors
(08:26):
all the time with adjustments.
If I'm like, hey, adjustmentsare stupid, it gets people to
click on your Instagram a littlebit more.
The adjustments are somethingthat I don't use as often as a
typical chiropractor would,because they're only useful in
certain situations.
Same thing with stretching.
Same thing with stretching.
Same thing with anything rightLike strengthening is not
(08:49):
necessarily useful everywhere.
Like I've heard the you can'tgo wrong getting strong
mentality.
Have you heard that before?
Speaker 1 (08:57):
I mean, I've heard, tight and strong is better than
weak and flexible too.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Right.
So these are.
These are.
These are comments that havevalue, but they they're so
context dependent.
That perfect example is I havea client who he came in for like
our consultation and was like Ilike what you're doing, but I
want to do stuff on my own.
(09:23):
And I was like, okay, no harm,no foul.
And he went and was doing allthe strengthening and the
stretching and like things thathe found on YouTube and you know
, like look stuff up himself andlike did his own research.
And I touched base with himagain a couple of months later
and he was like I'm I triedevery like I don't know what
else to do, like I've tried allof the things, um, and I've
(09:44):
given them enough time that like, like should work.
But I'm hitting a plateau.
And I said that that's verynormal, considering that you are
just doing a general thing fora specific problem.
So the fact that if you, if youtake a shotgun approach and
it's like hey, hamstring,stretch, and you like shoot it
at 100 people, 10 people areprobably going to get great
(10:05):
benefit from it, right, but whatabout the other 90?
So he was, he was in that boatwhere we had the.
We had that conversation againmonths later and where your pain
is, it's usually not where yourproblem is.
So after going into thatassessment we realized what we
had to manage and work on and hewas just surfing for the first
(10:26):
time in years without shoulderpain.
So like that was sweet, awesome.
I didn't do anything superspectacular, we just looked
outside of the conventionalrealm like if, what if?
what you're doing.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
If, if what everybody else is doing isn't working for
you, do something differentyeah, and while stretching all
right, I'll go real into itstretching can get quite
dangerous and the people thatkeep doing it because they feel
like it gets them that painrelief kind of how we talk about
what happens, your bodyrealizing it.
But if they're actually hypermobile already and, like you
(11:00):
know, maybe you don't you're notgoing to see that in your
general everyday person, whoprobably just lifts weights
generally, but you might seethat in Olympic weightlifter, a
CrossFitter, in your world.
For me it's baseball athletes,it's it's tennis swim.
It's these people that needhyper range of motion, because
that's that's when you kind ofstart getting in trouble, where
it's like, okay, um, I'm goingto keep stretching my shoulder,
(11:25):
even though if I probably tooktheir range of motion, they
might have 200 total degrees ofrange of motion and shoulder
when it should be 180, um, andthat's when you start going,
okay, yeah, why you don't need astretch, you got too much range
, but we need to stop.
You need to stop.
We need to provide all all thestability possible to stop you
from uh, to at least try tostrengthen that range of motion
(11:47):
uh that you have, or thatexcessive range of motion that
you have.
So I mean it can definitely gocompletely in the opposite
direction if someone hangs on toit too long, depending on their
previous history, what thingsthey were involved in and things
like that yeah, from a verylike zoomed out perspective.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
I think that's even a bigger problem is people don't
understand why they'restretching in the first place.
You know, if they have all the,the right information, that's
going to be like specific tothem.
They might not choose to do it,you know.
Or if they just got blindadvice from someone, it's like
(12:26):
oh, my back hurts, I'll stretchit.
It's like I don't even knowwhat stretching means in that
context.
Like what do you mean?
Stretching can have a bunch ofdifferent names.
You can hire someone to stretchyou, you can stretch yourself,
you can use a band, you can do abazillion, you can do it fast,
you can do it slow, you can doit long, you can do it short.
There's so many like ways.
So just saying like stretchingis good or stretching is bad,
(12:48):
neither of those things areright, you know now.
So there is like that's aanother chunk of it, because
people get very like tied tocertain modalities or like
things that they see resultswith.
It's like, hey, I got a lot ofresults with stretching, so I
(13:11):
became like a stretch therapistand like I'm going to do
stretching with everybodybecause that's what I do and if
stretching isn't, the isn'tgoing to work for a certain
amount of the population thatlike walks in my door, like
that's OK, they need somethingelse, right.
But if someone's like on theother camp, if someone's like
(13:32):
coming from the other side andsaying, hey, like when you're
trying, like when you're goingthrough, stretching the people
that it works for, fantastic,the people that it doesn't work
for, like why, like what it likewhere?
Like what have?
What more do we have to lookinto?
Speaker 1 (13:49):
you know, well, I think even like how we know how
the mechanism works, right, it'sall pain control theory, so
like, at the end of the day,you're not actually correcting
the issue, uh, most of the time.
So that's that's kind of like.
Just, we know that's going tobe through.
It's just your body kind oftelling itself all right, I'm
going to tolerate this stretch alittle bit better.
Um, so we know we didn'tactually solve okay.
(14:10):
So why are you having thathamstring pain?
Is it more so something you'redoing every day?
Is it how you're lifting?
Is it you're lifting too much,things like that?
And I, I mean obviously I.
I go anecdotal on this becauseI'll be perfectly honest, me
personally, I don't even stretchat all, never like, like, even
even when, um, like I'll, I'llhave some'm like all right,
(14:34):
maybe I should do some of thesestretches.
Like I had IT band syndrome andso I was like all right, I'm
going to you know, work on myTFL, my glutes, I'm going to
stretch these out, blah, blah,blah.
It didn't do anything, it was awaste.
It was a waste of time.
It like felt like, and whateveryone gets like, oh, like
(14:57):
kind of feels good now becauseit probably maybe was something
going on there, but then itquickly went away.
What helped me in thosesituations I was doing?
I was doing weighted step upsand things like that to kind of
work on like the range of motionand strengthening my knee in
that specific uh range, and thatwas fine when people get tied
to like one thing and they thinkit's the only thing.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
When every, if you only have a hammer, everything
looks like a nail.
So chiros fall into that trapall the time.
Where oh, my back hurtsadjustment.
Oh, I have an ear infection.
Adjustment, oh, like my, mykid's goldfish is sick
adjustment.
If you're spraying that atpeople for everything you might
(15:32):
have, you'll have a camp ofpeople who are like this is the
greatest thing ever.
You'll have a camp of peoplewho are like eh, it's kind of
okay, it's like it kind of works, like I kind of feel good.
And then you have a camp ofpeople who are like that's not
helpful, off, like that is thesolution that works for you.
(15:55):
I respect that.
Go, do that.
The rest of you.
We have to have a deeperconversation, and those are the
people who I'm talking to,because most of my clients have
never or have tried other stuff.
I've tried stretching, I'vetried going to the chiropractor,
I've tried physical therapy,I've tried strengthening, like
same kind of thing, whateverthat means, and I have no
(16:15):
results.
So why is it not working?
What is the root cause of theproblem?
Where are we actually going toget results from?
Are the conversations that I'mhaving with people.
So it just goes a couple layersdeeper, yeah, and go ahead,
okay.
One more thought so when thewhen I'm having the conversation
with people about stretching,so like that's the whole thing,
(16:38):
like they'll come in and, oh, sothis, this is really who I made
it for a specific client, right, he, he was the inception of
this, so comes in pretty new toa plan of care, and I was like
what are you doing before yourruns?
Because that's like the mainissue.
He's like ah, I'm doing somestretching.
(17:02):
I was like okay, how's thatworking for you?
He's like, eh, like I feel likekind of good.
And I was like, okay, like whatstretches are you doing?
And then he like demonstratedus like a basic hamstring
stretch and I said, okay, likeis that that's?
Is that working for you?
He's like not really.
I'm like okay, so why are youdoing it?
(17:22):
And he like didn't have ananswer.
He's like oh, I got, I thinkI'm just supposed to stretch
more.
It's like why, you know?
He's like yeah, I really don'tknow.
And like that's just a hugewaste of time because, like, the
guy doesn't like stretching,he's not getting results from
stretching and he still feelslike he has to do it.
(17:43):
So that whole line of thoughtis we have to break the belief
that he quote-unquote has to dostretching.
I tell people that all the time,with like mobility routines too
.
If you're spending an hourbefore your workout to do
stretching, I tell people thatall the time, with like mobility
routines too, if you'respending an hour before your
workout to do a mobility routine, that's not really getting you
the results that you want in thegym.
It's probably because somethingin the gym itself your exercise
(18:04):
selection is doing more harmthan good, which is requiring
you, which is making you feellike shit, which is making you
feel like you have to do amobility routine.
But then you go back in and dothe same shit that makes you
feel like shit and you get stuckin this big cycle.
So it's like why don't wechange the shit that makes you
feel like shit so you actuallyfeel good, so you don't need a
(18:25):
mobility routine in the firstplace?
How does that sound?
And they're like that's anoption and I'm like, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
So it's, it's the education piece too.
I, I think that's big.
Or like so many people juststretch it, they just go.
I, I don't know.
It's because I don't know,maybe we got to go change the
curriculum all the way down tofreaking pe and uh middle school
and in high school to be likehey, like, obviously stretching
is a thing, but you know, itmight just be easier to teach
someone how to do a warm-upprior to be like hey, like,
obviously stretching is a thing,but you know it might just be
easier to teach someone how todo a warm-up prior to everything
(18:56):
.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Like my yeah, my biggest issue is the intent
behind it so like if you arelike, if you've taken a bunch of
like continuing educationcourses with like stretching and
you're like you know whatyou're doing, you know when it
is appropriate, you know whenit's not, and you're talking to
a person and they are a good fitfor what you do and you do it.
You get them results.
That's amazing.
I want to give you a hug, likethat's phenomenal.
(19:19):
But when people have no fuckingidea what they're doing and why
they're doing it and they'reokay, like.
They're like weirdly okay withthat.
They're like I just know I needto stretch more.
I'm, like you, sure about that.
You know, are you?
sure about that you sure aboutthat?
Speaker 1 (19:36):
it's probably not the case.
Like, and obviously, like wesaid, there's different
situations.
Me with the baseball background, right, I know one.
One of the things that we lookfor is, you know, all right, if
they've lost internal rotationafter throwing, it's something
that's not the whole picture fora baseball athlete, but hey, we
still need to address thatbecause if they don't have in
all the internal rotation theyneed while throwing in their
(19:56):
shoulder, that means you knowthey're going to be slamming the
brakes on it, the muscle is notgoing to be able to activate
properly to slow them down therotator cuff and so like in that
population it makes sense andyou know there's a lot of
education to it.
Like I used to work.
That it's.
I think it's like hey, this iswhy we're doing this stretch,
it's because I want to trackyour range of motion to make
sure that it gets better beforeyou do a high intent throwing
(20:17):
day again and so like.
Right there, like you said,there needs to be a reason
behind it.
Just stretching the stretch,that's, that's how I.
Honestly, it's how you get introuble, that's how you, that's
how they end up.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
I avoid blanket terms at all costs.
So, stretching flexibility,mobility, like recovery.
What does that mean?
Like if you say recovery, I sayrecovery and Joe Schmo says it.
They all mean different thingsto us.
So if I'm having thatconversation and we get to, it's
(20:58):
like okay, we agree on terms,now we can move forward with the
conversation, great.
But if we're just like throwingbuzzwords out there because
there truly is no deeperunderstanding past that, then
that's an issue.
Then you're operating out of aplace.
You're operating out of a placeof ignorance, which is not
(21:20):
always your fault.
It's like you don't know whatyou don't know.
So like once you're open to, aslong as you're open-minded, and
you're like, hey, like thismight not be what you think it
is, and you, and if you're justlike, no, fuck, you like no,
like I believe this and likethat's what it is, then you're
gonna be stuck there, you know,and you're gonna be no, fuck you
like, no, like I believe thisand like that's what it is, then
you're gonna be stuck there,you know, and you're gonna be
(21:41):
having that back pain, trying tostretch your hamstrings for 10
years and it's never gonna work.
But if you're open to the ideaof like hey, if you have a tight
like rubber band and you'restretching it out all the way to
the end, right, and it isfeeling real tight, why would
stretching it even more providerelief?
Speaker 1 (22:01):
yeah, that's the comment.
You know that's uh, the I goback to like back in school in
the original one of the originalbooks I read um, I got some
here somewhere, but you knowthat was like.
The initial thing it talkedabout was like the hamstring
like and being like.
Why do we keep stretchinghamstrings, like it's already in
a lengthened position in mostpeople?
Because most people end upsuper tilted, because it's just
(22:24):
what people started going for toimprove performance, so why are
we going to keep addressing itthat way?
Speaker 2 (22:31):
so the the goal.
Like when I have people whocome in and they have it.
This is another thing.
Someone can two differentpeople who come in and they have
.
This is another thing.
Someone can two differentpeople can come in and be like I
have tight hamstrings, likethey feel tight.
That is always valid what youare feeling.
I'm always going to respectthat.
But you go and you put them ona table and you do the test for,
like the straight leg raise tosee their hamstring range of
(22:54):
motion and some of them havelike super limited range of
motion and then some of themhave super flexible, like a lot
of range of motion, but theyboth feel tight.
Why?
And if the person who's like,oh, tight hamstrings, stretch
right, that could work for oneof them and it could make the
(23:14):
other one no change or worse.
So why is that blanketstatement useful?
Like I don't agree with thatcontext is so dependent.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Yeah, I've seen that situation to.
You know the person thatactually has the limited range
of motion.
Even then you might actuallywork more on pelvis and like
just getting their pelvis tomove in a project that's going
to get it to work a little bitbetter, where the other person
who you described as hypermobileyou're probably going we need
to stabilize this Like that'sgoing to do a better job at your
(23:45):
sensations than just stretch,stretch, stretch, because if you
just keep stretch, stretch,stretch, you're just kind of
tapping into your body's way toalter pain as opposed to fixing
the problem.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Yeah, people with the same complaint need two
entirely different plans yeah,because of what you find, you
know yeah, but um, there's,there's something that you you
just said there.
That kind of like sparked awhole rabbit hole with the with
um, with the whole likestretching thing that the like
(24:19):
we're not.
I feel like the bigger part ofthe conversation is like
nobody's mad at stretching likewe clearly defined it.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
I could be upset at it.
Yeah, you pissed no.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Yes, no, not as you are, I'm gonna take it to a
lobster dinner and never call itagain.
But the thing is is likeeverything.
One of my mentors says this andI love it when he does.
He's like everything is wrong.
Some things are useful.
I'm like I agree with that.
(24:51):
Yeah, because stretching mightbe the key to this person.
Stability might be the key tothat person.
Adjustments might be the key tothat person, might be the key
to that person, the adjustmentsmight be the key to that person.
A combination of both rightgoing to therapy and just
talking out your feelings mightbe either.
So pain is so complex.
So saying like I avoidpractitioners who are like this
(25:18):
is good for everybody, becauseit's not.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Except for sleep.
You get to sleep that stuff,that stuff.
If they're preaching that,they're probably correct, but
yeah, from our physical, what weactually end up incorporating
to most people, yeah, that'sover.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
But let me just poke the bear a little bit more.
What if you're sleeping 20hours a day and you're super
depressed and you're not goingto work?
You know what I mean that's toomuch yeah, there's a balance
like exactly that.
That is the.
That is the.
That is the piece that ismissing with all of these
conversations, right?
Speaker 1 (25:56):
nothing is good for everybody yeah in my opinion no,
I, I agree, everyone like, andwe've seen it before, like and
we've done it before, we'vegiven someone stretches to do
and bada bing, bada, boom, theygot better and you're like all
right yeah, awesome, great, thatwas a good day.
(26:19):
I still give stretches tocertain people, like you know,
like I still do it because youknow I deal with a high school
athlete population who gets weget into the.
They actually don't know whatstretching is sometimes.
So there's a big, a wholeeducation moment and just like
which is awesome, yeah.
So you know, I kind of get tostart from the ground up a lot
(26:42):
of times on these kids, if, if,there's enough time.
So yeah, I still still placefor it.
There's a balance different shitexists because different shit
works for different people yeah,but I think for I think it all
depends on your population thatyou see, like right for you, a
lot of times you're seeingpeople after they've already
tried it and it doesn't work.
So, like that's what somepeople need to realize with that
(27:06):
as well, and like you said whywe started this episode.
Going back to your post likeright, your post wasn't meant
for people who had acuteinjuries.
Like you know, everyone's anathlete, but athlete but you
know, not for, like sports,specific athletes, things like
that.
That's not who that wastargeted at.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
And it also wasn't meant for people who like, like
stretching.
So like, if you like stretching, you just, you just go, like
this and you don't listen to me.
You just scroll right by.
And that's what most people did.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
But you know, you know I go through.
Obviously.
You know I had I looked up abunch of research before this.
So I'm going to run through thelist real quick, because that's
what I think a lot of times.
To the people that just go,nope, stretching works, fuck off
Like I'm not, you can't changemy opinion.
They also just don't go intodifferent results.
Or, you know, dig down deepenough to find out why the
(27:56):
interventions are working.
Dig down deep enough to findout why the interventions are
working.
So I went all the way back to2003 on a systematic review, as
even back then for stretchingfor prevention of injuries,
results were mixed.
It was like half the studieshelped, half the studies didn't.
So right from an injuryprevention standpoint, not doing
too much.
2008 systematic review moderateto strong evidence that routine
static stretching does notreduce overall injury rates, but
(28:18):
it does.
Stretching does seem to dosomething at the
musculotendinous junction andmight help with that, because
that seems to be the only partof the muscle that it might
actually help lengthen.
Um, so there's another study inhere where, because of that,
it's actually kind of good foruh fall risk that it ends up
actually decrease.
It helps with balance anddecreasing the risk of falls in
(28:41):
older population.
So you could generally say, okay, there is something good, good
about it in that aspect to applyto more people generally, but
you know, that's probably forpeople who are pain-free, no
issues.
Um, you know that everythingelse is just like no effect.
No effect, no effect on injuryrates.
(29:02):
No, like nothing, like anythingafter like 2014.
It's.
It's just like no, doesn't,doesn't do what you think it
does in injury prevention orright injury rehabilitation or
anything like that yeah, so likethat, let's like circle back to
the post right and also asterixright, confirmation bias is a
(29:22):
real thing.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
So like, if you really want to find studies that
are going to support yourclaims, you can right like the
world of research.
It's known for that right.
Yeah, so going into theresearch with a very unbiased
view and being like all right,let's look at a bulk of it.
What's it saying?
And like now, we find a commontheme without formulating an
opinion prior.
I respect you.
(29:44):
That's a good way to go, yeah,yeah but going back to like what
I said, like the most currentresearch suggests right, like
you, you just confirmedeverything that I said.
Well, so the the point?
The point of that is like hey,johnny, why are you doing your
hamstring stretch?
It's like, oh, I don't know,like to increase flexibility or
(30:08):
to like decrease pain.
I think it's like, hmm, is itworking?
No, not really.
It's like you might want to,you might want to try something
else, because stretching is notdoing what you think it's doing.
But then if you have aconversation with Johnny, it's
like hey, you, or Sally, you,you you're stretching.
He's like, yeah, it's fantastic.
(30:30):
Like I feel so good after Istretch and it it's the best.
Like I feel so recovered, I'mlike ready to rock, like it's a
huge part of my life.
Sally man, fucking tastic, youdo your thing.
I'm not going to try to telllike.
I'm not going to tell thatperson no.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Well, it's funny.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Stretching seems to be one of those things too.
It's like if it worked one time, I feel like people are more
apt to just put it into theirgeneral routines as well, and
maybe that's part of the issue.
Um, so, maybe it did helpinitially and then they just
keep doing it because it's likewell, it worked that one time a
lot of things have a plateaueffect.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
Like if you curl your 20 pound dumbbells, like
eventually that's gonna get easy.
If you only run a mile, that'seventually gonna get easy.
So like they're yeah, runningis a whole different beast.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
We should have a podcast on that running or uh, I
was saying even after this,when you talked about the
buzzwords recovery, I was like Idon't know, we haven't actually
ever had a what is recoverypodcast and like defining that
for people, because that is thatgets.
That's all over the place andwe probably technically can't
define it, um, because it's toomultifaceted.
(31:45):
But you can at least give wecould at least give tools on
like what you should be lookingfor 100.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
All right, but I think that wraps it up.
I feel like I just went totherapy and got it all off my
chest.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
All right, now go make another controversial post.
Oh yeah, Give it some fodder.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Dude, they say you're not doing Instagram right until
you start getting haters.
So I guess that's a win.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
There you go.
First couple of haters.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Yeah, right, all right, mikey, take us out, yay.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Go fix yourself.
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