Hack your stretching

Fitness is chalk full of hacks: simple things anyone can do to instantly improve their workouts.

Today we’re going to hack stretching. Without further ado here are two hacks for a better stretch.

Girls used to diss me, now they write letters ‘cause they miss me. Probably bc I started working out at Train.

Hack #1: Timing

Timing is everything with stretching. Is it better to stretch when your muscles are cold?

Or once they’ve warmed up a bit.

Picture a Milky Way bar that you’ve left in the fridge over night. Take it out, bang it on the table and it will likely shatter.

That’s what stretching a cold muscle is like. Stretching a cold muscle increases your chance of injury.

Kind of defeats the purpose of stretching in the first place, don’t ya think?

Now picture that same Milky Way bar once you’ve left it in the sun for an hour. It’s gooey, yes, but more importantly it’s stretchy.

That’s what a warmed up muscle is like.

The moral of this story is stretch when your muscles are warm, i.e. when you’ve got a sweat going, or at the end of a workout. Timing of your stretch matters.

Hack #2: Reciprocal inhibition

If you want more flexibility you need to understand reciprocal inhibition.

Muscles often come in antagonistic pairs. “In an antagonistic muscle pair as one muscle contracts the other muscle relaxes or lengthens. The muscle that is contracting is called the agonist and the muscle that is relaxing or lengthening is called the antagonist.” Usually one is on the front of the body, one on the back. Or side to side.

This is reciprocal inhibition: “the relaxation of muscles on one side of a joint to accommodate contraction on the other side.”

An obvious example are your quadriceps and hamstrings (legs).

Squeeze your quad muscle; it’s reciprocal (antagonist) muscle, your hamstring, has to relax when you squeeze. Vice versa if you squeeze your hamstrings (the quads release).

If a muscle is tight, or uncomfortable, try engaging it's reciprocal. It relaxes and voila: immediate flexibility, immediate relief.

Tight hamstrings? Engage your quadriceps as you stretch (after a warn up of course) and watch your range of motion immediately increase. Ditto for stretching your quad (engage your hamstrings).

Other antagonistic pairs: bicep/tricep, erector spine (low back)/abdominals, glutes/hip flexors.

Want more hacks?

I can keep going, but this is a short form blog and why give away all these secrets when you can book a session with one of our amazing trainers. It’s not a stretch to say they have these hacks, plus a few more, hidden up their sleeve.