No. Stretching rarely solves a problem. We hear this all the time as, “you gotta do your stretches”. Or I have someone ask: “I have back pain, what stretches should I be doing”?

Let’s see if we can clear this up. First off, we are talking about passive stretching. The classic bend over, touch your toes kind.

Stretching in this fashion in my mind has only one purpose; to fix a range of motion deficit. Even at that, there are better ways to do it. If you are having pain because of a range of motion deficit, then getting that range of motion back is the right move. For instance, if your hip flexors are so stiff that even in standing they are on stretch, it’ll pull your lumbar spine into extension which could potentially cause pain. Or if you are missing ankle dorsiflexion which changes your set up in a squat, then restoring dorsiflexion is appropriate.

So if you are missing range of motion, and it’s causing a compensation leading to pain, then the next question is: what is causing the restriction? It could be muscular, capsular, or even neural, and oftentimes, all of the above. So you see, stretching really only addresses one component of restriction. This is why you see a lot of physios doing mobilizations with bands and kettlebells; we are trying to affect the capsular stiffness.

The other issue is that passive stretching can actually cause issues. Muscles and tendons provide stability around a joint. If you have too much flexibility (yes that’s a thing), the joint becomes unstable. Or in physio speak, hypermobile. Couple that with the fact that humans just tend to do what they are good at and you get a scenario where joints are put at risk. Think of the flexible female that loves to do yoga, or the stiff male that power lifts. People tend to self-select what they perform well.

So, if you are stiff and it’s causing compensation, what are you to do? You can stretch, however active movement at end range is the smarter choice. Let’s dig into what happens when you stretch to illustrate this point. You have receptors in the muscle called spindles. When they sense stretch, they respond by resisting the stretch as a protective mechanism. Long duration passive stretching inhibits this response temporarily. Now that area is able to move a bit more. The problem here is that this newly gained range of motion hasn’t been used yet, so it’s an unstable range of motion. So, if you can find a way to use this motion actively, you are going to have more control and have less chance of an injury.

Hip internal rotation tends to be a range of motion that many people are missing. Here is an example of a passive stretch for internal rotation:

And here is a more active approach and would be my recommendation:

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“It’s All About Stretching”