Why are we testing stretching?
Although stretching is popular, we don’t know whether stretching before or after exercise is worth doing
Many people stretch before or after exercise, and they do it for several different reasons:
• to lessen soreness after exercise (or avoid sore muscles entirely),
• to reduce the risk of injury,
• to enhance their performance - or because it makes them feel better.
The research that has been carried out before now can’t tell us clearly if we should stretch. Some studies done on army recruits suggest stretching doesn’t prevent injuries, but we don’t know if this is true for everybody.
And few studies have looked at stretching for more than a short period, even though the effects of stretching may add up over time. This means we need to do a scientifically sound study with recreational exercisers to decide whether we should stretch to prevent injuries and soreness.
How will we investigate the effects of stretching?
First we need to find the right people for our study. We are looking for adults who exercise at least once a week, and who also met some simple conditions like having an email address.
Once we have found participants, we will randomly allocate them to two groups. People in one group will stretch before and after exercise, and people in the other group will not stretch.
If you join the study it’s important that you are willing to start or stop stretching to follow the program in your group.
We need both groups to investigate the effects of stretching properly. We will allocate people randomly to get similar groups so we can be confident that any differences we find at the end of the study are really due to stretching and not something else.
During the study, everyone will regularly report how stretching or not stretching affects muscle soreness, risk of injury and looseness. Based on these data, we will assess the effects of stretching in a scientifically sound way.
What will you do if you participate?
First of all, we will ask you to keep exercising regularly and to fill in one online report about each week.
If you join the study, we will allocate you randomly (using a process a bit like a lottery) to either the stretching group or the control group.
• If you are in the stretching group, we will ask you to stretch muscles in the legs, hips and back before and after exercise. You will get instructions for a specific stretching procedure for seven groups of muscles. The stretches will take about 10 minutes to complete
• If you have joined the control group, we will ask you not to stretch, but to continue to exercise as usual. If you normally stretch, we will ask you to stop doing that during the study.
It is important to understand that, if you join the study, you won’t get to choose if you are in the stretching group or the control group.
Every week you will report online your muscle soreness, injuries, side effects and feeling of looseness. We will also ask you to tell us how much you exercised and if you followed the program in your group. If you are injured, we will ask you for more details. The trial will last 13 weeks.
I'm not sure I want to commit to the possibility of 13 weeks without stretching, so I doubt I'll sign up, but it'll be interesting to see the results. For anyone who wants to know how they're going about it the full protocol is available.
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. I'm more than happy to accept that running training makes me better at running. And that interval training makes me still better. And that getting old makes me worse, and will continue to do so (not sure about the "happy" there). I don't need a control to accept that, I can simply observe it in large group studies. But what I've seen and read about stretching is inconclusive.
