Extra Stretching and Mobility Work Is Stupid
Most internet trainers and PT's are wrong on this. Also, there are PHD’s who will tell you that if you cut a boy’s dick off and he wants to be a girl, he becomes a girl. SBS Mobility Plan Included.
It’s only been in the last decade or so that an entire industry hyper-focused on mobility spawned from the strength and fitness world.
It wasn’t until about 20 years into my training life when I laid on the ground and humped my first foam roller.
The marketing was so strong that even someone like myself with a propensity towards cynicism began to question whether or not my training was sufficient to keep me mobile and flexible enough. And that maybe I should spend an extra 5 to 10 minutes per day working on my mobility.
Fast forward a couple of years and I realized that just like with so many other movements in the health and wellness industry, the mobility thing was largely just another opportunity to sell you a bunch of gadgets and gizmos that you don’t really need.
Battery charged foam rollers, “boomsticks,” voodoo floss - even the names imply that there is no rational explanation as to why it works, just buy these things and “boom” you’ll feel better. If it doesn’t work, it’s because your faith is weak. It’s like voodoo.
The rise of the mobility movement is two parts -
There’s the complete hucksters who just want to cash in on people’s fears that there is something wrong with them.
“OHHH… it’s all because of my dysfunctional illiopsoas!”
“If I just mummify myself with this floss for 10 minutes per day and then roll around on this giant tampon, and then do the “mobility wod” of the day, all my problems will be solved.”
There’s also the promotors of all this mobility fanaticism who may be well meaning but are simply trying to solve the problems caused by years of stupid training.
I can tell you as someone who competed in powerlifting for over a decade, which is not the sport to do if you want to preserve your structural integrity, when you get hurt - which you will if you get to any respectable level of performance - you can get desperate.
If you happen to get injured doing anything, that is when you are most vulnerable. It can get to the point where you will do almost anything just to function as a normal man again.
Thankfully, since I quit powerlifting, I have not suffered any injuries now that I exercise properly. Specifically no back pain.
I couldn’t wait to start training in a healthy bio-mechanically sound way once I was done.
I will still get the occasional residual tendon flare up, or some scar tissue that will lead to a slight muscle pull that may make me post-pone a workout or two, but nothing that anyone who has a history of competitive sports doesn’t deal with at times.
Stupid training will make you do stupid things.
Obviously there is nothing stupid about training like a powerlifter if you are a competitive powerlifter.
But I’m sorry to say, if you are not a powerlifter but follow powerlifting programs as your form of exercise, that’s stupid.
It’s the equivalent of putting on pads and a helmet and going out and doing hitting drills on the football field with your buddy when neither of you play football and calling that your training or exercise.
The bottom line is this - If you train the right way, and do things exactly as I say - the amount of sets, the correct tempo, avoiding fast peak forces in stretched muscle positions and you train with an effective range of motion, you do not need any extra stretching or mobility work.
It is already built in to a well designed strength program.
If you have to do extra mobility work, then you need to fix your training.
It’s kind of like the Vertical Diet that a lot of these huge bodybuilders and strength athletes follow. Because they’ve spent most of their lives carrying around an excess of 100 pounds of bodyweight and ate foods in the amounts that require them to be that abnormally gigantic, they have wrecked their digestive systems.
They claim there is something special about white rice because it digests easily. This is true. Their digestive systems are so shot they can’t digest any fibrous or more nutrient dense foods.
Normal healthy people don’t need to eat like that.
White rice is shit for nutrition, ok.
And mobility training is horseshit too.
Stretching can have some minimal application in rehabilitation.
But outside of that, it should only be used as a method of building strength and muscle size, as in loaded stretches.
Check this out -
Instead of wasting your time with this:
Do this:
Instead of this nonsense:
Do these:
Did you know that every time you get into full hip extension on a hip thrust or glute bridge, you are taking your hip flexors into a stretched position, and one that is a safe, effective range of motion.
At the bottom of a dumbbell press you are taking your pec muscle close to an end range at working it in a stretched position.
This is better for overhead mobility because there is active resistance to the overhead position and you are actually getting productive strength work done:
Than this garbage:
The problems happen when joints are taken to their end range and overstretched.
The feeling you get when you stretch a muscle close to the joint end range is actually a protective mechanism.
The muscle begins to contract to send a signal that it is being taken past it’s effective range of motion. There is a limit to the the length a muscle will allow.
This is called the stretch reflex. It’s to protect you from hurting your joints and/or connective tissues.
Eventually your nervous system will allow “new” ranges of motion depending on your joint structure which is genetic, but this needs to be introduced slowly and should be done within a properly designed training program and mostly under load.
This is why even in our workouts, stretched position exercises are typically not placed first.
But no additional stretching or mobility work needs to be done outside of your workout.
It’s a waste of time and will impede your recovery because stretching is a form of training your muscles not resting them.
This is why even people who only do Yoga (fake exercise) will have some degree of muscle development. It’s called stretch mediated hypertrophy.
Some people use stretching to “warm up” for a workout, but it’s actually the opposite of what should be done.
As this one of dozens of studies shows, stretching does not prevent injury and may even set you up for one:
A randomized trial of pre-exercise stretching for prevention of lower-limb injury
At times I will place a quad or lat stretch for 60 seconds at the end of the workout.
This is to cover some stretch mediated hypertrophy that we may have not got to in the workout.
For example, say we didn’t do any bulgarian split squats or sissy squats, then I may say to throw a quad stretch in at the end, but that is not because I think you need to stretch for recovery. It’s because we can give certain quad muscles some more work by taking them into a stretched position.
Loading muscle end ranges within your personal active range of motion during exercise is what will actually make your muscles stronger in greater ranges of motion.
But again, a lot of this end range will be determined by genetics.
A new range of motion or more “flexibility” isn’t going to be achieved if you have not loaded that area effectively and given it enough mechanical tension stimulus to adapt and get stronger in those ranges.
Otherwise there may be negative adaptations.
This is why some people who merely stretch alone end up getting hurt in those new ranges, because those new ranges are weak.
Is this making any sense?
If it doesn’t, that’s ok.
Just don’t worry about stretching.
Here’s your mobility plan:
Follow the program
Go for walks
Don’t sit for long periods of time
Take time to breathe deep and chill
This isn’t what you hear from a lot of trainers and physical therapists.
That’s because most of my knowledge comes from self-study while theirs is institutionalized box thinking.
Remember, even PHD’s can be clueless if the degree itself or entire field of study is bullshit.
Don’t fall for the appeal to authority fallacy.
Authority is good in so long that it serves the truth and is not divorced from common sense.
There are PHD’s in Gender Studies who will tell you that if you cut a boy’s dick off and he wants to be a girl, he becomes a girl.
Does that make them right just because they are an “authority” in Satanic gobbledygook?
Guys, if you can keep your common sense in today’s world, it’s going to be as if you are a genius.