by Kinetix | Jan 15, 2025 | Healthcare, Training
How Important is stretching to your health? And how much should time should you invest in it?
There’s been a lot of talk around stretching lately. People like me have been clamoring for many years that stretching is very overrated and takes up way too large of a role in most people’s exercise programs. There is a lot of evidence that tell us it falls flat with regards to range of motion gains (compared to loaded mobility), injury prevention (no correlation), or utility for sports or performance. You’re far better off doing some loaded mobility or dynamic movement than spending a ton of time stretching every muscle you have. Loading up your end ranges of motion serves multiple purposes: the stretch receptors that help determine a muscles “length” are more likely to adapt if there is extra stress on the muscle, load will also allow you to adapt elements of control over your body, and it will also allow your tissues to become stronger and more resilient in what is typically it’s most vulnerable position.
I myself still believe stretching has a place. It is not useless. There are others that will tell you that it’s a complete waste of time. For me, movement is movement. If people will do 10 minutes of stretching at home on an off day, a recovery day, or when they can’t make it to the gym due to time or life constraints, then that is still really great. It’s still a positive stress for the body that helps you to move and improve, even if the effects are marginal. Stretching can also still give you that really positive dopamine boost and post-exercise relaxation that makes us feel good. There’s never anything wrong with feeling good and doing something that involves moving your body.
But in the big picture, it should really only make up a very small percentage of a person’s regiment. There are far greater benefits to strength, conditioning, loaded mobility, and skill acquisition for your long term health. They will have the most profound impact on your ability to reduce/prevent injury, stave off disease and maintain a healthy immune system, look more aesthetic and ultimately feel better.
With regards to timing, it doesn’t matter whether you stretch before exercise, after exercise, or dedicate your own day to stretching. It doesn’t help performance or reduce injury risk before an exercise or sport and it doesn’t improve recovery after an exercise or sport. All that matters to see some effect is that you do it often or intense enough to see change, just like any other type of training. Time under tension is all that matters. If you do it hard enough for long enough, you’ll see more results.
by Kinetix | Jan 6, 2025 | Training
What does recovery even mean? What is the most effective way to recover? Should I do active recovery or passive recovery?
The word recovery gets used a lot with training these days. And it is really important with regards to optimal performance and injury reduction. Recovery is the ability for our body to return to a baseline level following a training stimulus. Typically it involves a period of time for our muscles, bones, nervous system etc to repair itself and build itself back to a “normal” state”. We see tons of “biohacks” discussing the ability to recover. Ice baths, sauna, foam rolling, active recovery, sleep, massage, stretching, cupping, acupuncture, red light…what actually helps?
Quite honestly, the best thing you can do is just sleep and rest. Our body is best at repairing itself after harder workouts by just leaving it alone. I forget who I heard the line from, perhaps Dr. Mike Israetel, but “it’s addition by subtraction.” It’s really difficult to think about adding more stress to your system that somehow helps it recover better.
There is marginal evidence that any of the above modalities improve recovery. It doesn’t make that useless. Things can definitely feel better but not be better. Many of these things are giving us a transient sensory experience that can sort of distract the nervous system for a time and allow it to perform a little better in the short term. Working with athletes or lifters who train consistently at higher levels can utilize these techniques to help them perform again and again and get a little bit better performance out of them because they “feel” better or looser or more freedom of movement. But the feel good stuff is a bit of an illusion because it isn’t ACTUALLY making you any better or more recovered. Again, this isn’t an attack on any of these strategies because they can be really effective at helping those elite athletes perform better in those short windows. But for most of us average, amateur level fitness enthusiasts, we aren’t training hard enough to require it. Getting a good sleep and sitting on our a** is probably the best thing we can do after a bout of intense exercise, and usually isn’t worth the thousands of dollars in investment for cold tanks, saunas, red lights, massage chairs…there’s just no evidence that they are actually effective in helping with recovery. If you have the means or you just like the way it makes you feel, please, by all means. It may make a small difference and allow you to perform just a little bit better. But on the whole, there is no magic pill that’s going to help you more than a good night’s sleep.
by Kinetix | Dec 27, 2024 | Healthcare, Training
Imagine doing everything you’ve ever done right handed but expecting the left to have the same size or skill level. Unless you are ambidextrous, you’ve been brushing your teeth, writing, swinging a bat or a club, kicking a ball one way your entire life. Maybe an athlete who practices their skills on both sides daily will have a little bit less disparity between right and left side.
But most people living a perfectly normal life are just not practicing skills or tasks with both sides. When you multiply this by 20, 30, 40, 50 years…you are going to have some imbalances. There is no direct link between muscle imbalance and injury. Yes, weak links on BOTH sides can fail and may need to be addressed. But left or right being bigger or stronger is not directly causing pain or injury.
I’ve been working out for the better part of 20 years. My left arm is still the limiting factor for a heavy dumbbell press. My left leg pistol squat is weaker than my right. I have a little more development visible on my right chest, arm, upper back. It’s perfectly normal and healthy.
Unless you are bodybuilding, for which it does matter, just work hard and incorporate some single leg / single arm activities in your programming. You don’t need to spend countless hours working on every little flaw or else you wouldn’t get any meaningful progress.
We are all flawed. The human body consists of 200+ bones and 700+ muscles. Do you really think they are all perfect? If we addressed every little imperfection we’d be moving backwards in our training. FOCUS ON WHAT MATTERS MOST, then do some fine tuning when things aren’t working the way you’d like them to.
Pursuing more symmetry (unless bodybuilding or you have a specific injury/reason to be working a weak link) is wasted time and effort that could be moving you forward. A good program incorporates some single arm or leg stuff and that should be more than enough for most of us.
by Kinetix | Dec 19, 2024 | Training
You don’t need a bunch of equipment or a heavy investment of time to keep moving you forward with your training. Obviously we’d like to spend some hours at the gym lifting weights, doing some effective zone 2 cardio, working on some mobility, maybe some HIIT work here and there. But for many of us, things come up. Work. Kids. You get invited to the bar. Things you simply can’t sacrifice for the gym.
Have a plan B in your back pocket. It won’t be nearly as effective as what you can accomplish in an hour, but I often find that it’s a choice between a full session, or no session at all. Find the middle ground sometimes! You can still be effective in 15, 10 or even five minutes. Strive for more, but keep some effective short workouts in your pocket for a rainy day. Things I like to focus on:
Pushups to failure (or close)
Sprints, any length, there and back
Jumps – squat jumps or box jumps
Lateral Agility – side to side
Stairs – 2 at a time
There are many variations which would be effective, but the next time you’re crunched for time, try these simple but effective exercises to avoid missing a day. You’ll be rewarded for setting a good precedent and never missing a scheduled workout day. Some is always better than none!
by Kinetix | Dec 18, 2024 | Healthcare
Pain is normal. I know this might seem crazy coming from a physical therapist, but everyone has pain and sometimes that’s ok and perfectly normal.
I think the biggest reason I’m relaying this message is to help people understand that we should always be moving forward, and too often we use a small amount of pain to stop doing activity because that’s what we learned was helpful 20 years ago (RICE is a very outdated acronym when something hurts – we need movement and load to heal).
Too often small amounts of pain stimulate fear and provoke negative thoughts about movement or training. “What if it gets worse?” “What if I delay the healing?” More often than not, movement is actually the solution to painful positions or forces.
Pain is just sensory information. It can be really valuable to tell us when something is wrong and needs to be addressed. But not all of the time. Sometimes it’s just a part of life that we gotta shrug our shoulders about and move on.
***Not all pain is created equal. I can’t tell you whether your pain is ok to work through or not without listening to your story and seeing you move. So please don’t generalize this to mean that everyone should always be working through pain because that is not the case at all. Pain that lasts a while, worsens with activity, or progresses over time should be addressed by a professional.
But what I do believe is if more people just accepted that some days things are going to hurt a little, it will bother you a lot less and allow you to continue moving forward to actually finding the solution. Yes, when you get older things hurt a bit more. When you train hard you’re going to feel it a bit more. Sometimes you’re gonna sleep wrong and have a cranky neck or back. But rather than using it as an excuse to stop exercising, maybe we could say “I’m getting older and things hurt more so maybe I should move more than I used to.” Or “I woke up with a cranky neck, maybe it’s a sign that I should probably work on some neck mobility or strength.”
Let’s not fear pain, and instead embrace it a bit more so that we can ultimately move forward.
