Stretching is one of my least favorite activities. It’s painful, it’s boring and it takes forever. It’s also entirely necessary if I expect to keep running triathlons, half-marathons and more races in the future.
I’m learning this the hard way. This whole week I’ve been hobbling around since tweaking my IT band early last week and making it even worse during the half-marathon. It was so bad I could barely stand on my left leg Sunday, and spend most of the day flat on my back. However, over the last 5 days I’ve been able to go from barely being able to stand up, to actually being able to walk places without not-so-subtle limp by following a consistent stretching routine. It’s going to take a few more days to get back to normal, but I’m getting there. As I’ve been limping around this week, the importance of stretching in my life has been seared into my head. Even if you’re not a runner or athlete, stay with me on this one…I’m not just talking about stretching muscles.
Why You Need To Stretch
There are three main reasons that are regularly given for why you should be regularly stretching.
- Stretching makes you more flexible. The more you stretch, the more your muscles’ range of motion expands and the more flexible you become.
- Stretching makes you stronger. As your range of motion expands, it allows more of your muscles to be recruited into whatever process you’re using
- Stretching can help keep you from getting hurt.
I don’t want to make this a clinic on stretching. If you want that, read Wikipedia. I’m also not a doctor so don’t sue me for any of this, but as I was going through these reasons for muscular stretching, I realized how similar muscular stretching is to life stretching.
Life Stretching
Life stretching is the practice of regularly pushing yourself in your daily life. In life stretching, you consistently stretch your preconceived ideas, your boundaries of what you think is possible. Life stretching tends to have a lot of the same benefits as actual muscular stretching:
- It makes you more flexible
- It makes you stronger
- It keeps you from getting hurt.
Just like stretching your muscles, life stretching increases the types of things you do. With this increased range of activities, you become more flexible as you have to learn how to constantly adapt to new activities. Also, once you start life stretching you have a greater variety of activities and experiences to draw from. These experiences make you stronger as you’re able to use that additional information down the road in order to problem solve. That combination of flexibility and strength allow you to stretch and push yourself even further while simultaneously helping make sure you don’t get hurt. With a broader set of experiences, you begin to learn which experiences, risks and stretches you should do which will push you towards your goals and which risks just aren’t smart and will just end up getting you hurt.
Regularly stretch yourself. Regularly do things you wouldn’t normally do. That’s the core of life stretching. Unfortunately, life stretching tends to have the same hurdles to implementation as muscular stretching:
- It requires putting yourself in uncomfortable and sometimes awkward positions.
- It usually hurts for short periods of time.
- You have to do it at regular intervals to see results over a period of time.
I’m convinced that there’s an inverse relationship between the quality of stretch and the ridiculous contortion of your body. The best stretches will make you look awkward. Just like your muscles, the times you’ll grow the most in your life will be when you feel a little awkward. Also, because you’re not used to being in that position, you’re going to feel a little pain. People will laugh, you’ll get embarrassed, or you’ll fail and it will hurt. But that period of pain is short. Pretty soon it’s over and you’ll move on to something else. The bad news is you’ll have to revisit that pain in different ways, by doing different things in order to see improvement. However, if you do it right, over time you’ll notice that things that once were incredibly hard don’t seem so hard anymore. Your tolerance builds and your thirst to try new stretches continues to grow.
5 Quick Stretches
- Do something you’ve never done before.
- Go somewhere you’ve never gone before.
- Talk to someone you’ve never talked to before.
- Eat something you’ve never eaten before.
- Try a hobby you’ve never tried before.
Put yourself out of place. It will hurt and when it does, instead of running away, breathe and stay calm. Feel the stretch, enjoy it and then do it again. Every time, try to go a little farther than you did before or find a new way to stretch yourself.
After a while, you’ll notice those stretches you used to do aren’t so hard or painful anymore. You might actually start start to enjoy what you used to think was painful.
Keep growing. Stretch regularly.
[Photo By Aye_Shamus]
Love this brother!! Expanding outside comfort zone and moving beyond what you think is possible. Beautiful connection to the body and life brother.
P
Thanks Patrick. Glad you enjoyed it. Love how you’re stretching yourself in your walk across the US.
You hate stretching? It’s actually one of my favorite parts of my workout!
– Although I’ve read some interesting studies that for runners not all stretching is good. Apparently it’s better to do more of movement stret – lunges, etc – as the regular sit and reach and all that is more likely to cause you to pull a muscle b/c it almost relaxes it too much. So I’ve read! –
Anyway, you know why Ken Griffy Jr. had all those hamstring problems!? It’s b/c he never stretched! One of the greatest players, and he could have been even greater! (Don’t ask me how I know this haha)
As for as Life Stretching goes –
I did some Life Stretching today actually. I finally pushed GO on my blog, The Mad to Live! 🙂
… I like how you worded Life Stretching btw. B/c stretching is considered to be more the easier, relaxing, less OMFG I’m going to fall off this machine if I don’t take a break – exercise routines. And so, in a way, looking at trying new things, places, hobbies, relationships seems a little bit more comfortable than if we called it, say, Life Hurtle Sprints haha. 😉
Hope your IT band heals quickly!
LAUREN
Congrats on your blog launch Lauren! I mostly hate stretching because it hurts so much :). I’m terribly inflexible, but as I stretch more, it hurts less. Guess I should probably stretch more.
On Life Stretching, sometimes you can’t just go and run a marathon. You might be able to physically do it, but you might not finish it or you might even hurt yourself. By stretching yourself in smaller ways over a period of time, you can improve and simultaneously prepare yourself yourself for something awesome.
PERFECT fuel for me to be reading right now Joel! You’re the second person close to me that’s offered advice like this in 2 days. I think I should start paying attention to the advice!
Epic stuff on the way now, thanks to this post…
🙂
Glad it helped Josh! Little by little. Keep at it bro!
Dude, Joel, you seriously tapped into my mind with this one.
I love to run, but I hate to stretch (and in the Army, we stretch two times longer then I would like).
I know it is good for the muscles and joints (and speeds up recovery/helps avoid injuries), I just wish it was more enjoyable.
Also, way to compare stretching your body to stretching your mind. Great way to bridge both together like that.
Keep up the awesome content!!
I feel you on the stretching, but the more i do it, the less it hurts. Maybe if I get good enough at stretching it won’t hurt at all! *crosses fingers*
I love your “5 stretches”. We get better when we realize how much we do not know.
It reminds me of a travel commercial years ago that had a byline of “Take a vacation from HOW you live”.
That’s a great line. Do you remember what commercial it was from?
I wish I did. That would make the quote better right?
I think it was a cruise line of some kind. Might be Corona though – a pre-cursor to the beach commercial series (“Change your latitude”)
What does it say that I do not remember th product but I remember the directive to “change your life”?
I guess that depends on who’s product it actually was 😉
Life stretching…what a great way to think about moving forward. As for stretching I am a firm believer in it. Stretching cured my ruptured disk in less than 90 days. Of course the secret with both forms of stretching is to keep at it. Once you start feeling better and more flexible doesn’t mean it’s time to stop. Many people who go through physical therapy (myself included) will slack off once they start feeling better. It’s a lifestyle for better living.
True Matt. Ironically, as the stretching gets easier, it’s also harder to keep at it. There’s a temptation to think you’ve arrived or “you’re set” when you’re really just back at the starting line.
Hey man – On the topic of actual stretching (not Life Stretching, which I love BTW) – Do you tend to have pain after long runs? Because I used to have trouble running more than 10 or 12 miles a week until I changed my form so that I wasn’t landing on my heel. (But you might know that since you’re using the gorilla shoes) 🙂
I had those issues when I wore shoes. When I switched to Vibrams, most of my knee pain went away. The current issue is just my IT band, which is basically a case of me horribly neglecting stretching it. Good news is, after a week or so of hobbling around, the knee is almost back to normal. =)
I totally know what you mean about stretching … if I don’t stretch or properly warm my body up before I hit the dojo for intense karate training, I. Will. SUFFER. :-/ Not fun!
Love the bit about life stretches. Continually challenging yourself will ensure you’ll never get bored of life, become complacent, idle, or passive. Also not fun.
Well put Nina 🙂
I love stretching, specifically when I am in difficult yoga poses (or stretching a muscle ridiculously tight.) I love the way my body fights back, stubbornly refusing to submit to the full extension of the pose.
You can’t force those things, you can’t just bend yourself and lay on your kneecap when your hamstring won’t allow it. So you have to keep gently pushing against the tension, breathing into the pain. Focusing on relaxing and pushing yourself straight into the discomfort and eventually mastering and conquering the pose that gives you pain.
At least that’s how I do yoga…if I can’t compete with others I’ll just compete against myself. 🙂
I’ve never done Yoga, but if it’s anything like stretching, I think it’ll kick my butt. You’re right though, after a bit of practice relaxing and pushing yourself into the pain, you eventually get to a place where you’re “past” the pose that gave you pain.
‘Life Stretching’ is a great concept Joel, and the comparisons with stretching muscles is so true. I’m always advising my clients that stretching is a vital part of the workout, a good 10 minutes at the end. I also assure them it needn’t be painful to be effective – just uncomfortable. Best to ease into a stretch for a few seconds, (never force it), and progress it gradually during the stretch. And sports massage is a great way of loosening up really stubborn muscles.
Great insight Dom. It doesn’t need to be painful…just uncomfortable. Very well put.
Joel,
Found you from a link at castlesintheair.org and am enjoying looking at your site. One book I’ve used often for injuries is called Pain Free by Pete Egoscue. I like his philosophy on preventing/healing injuries by getting the body lined up with simple exercises and stretches. Thought it might be of interest to you . . . best wishes!
Kurt
Hey Kurt,
Thanks for stopping by. Nina’s awesome. Thanks for the book rec, I’ll check it out!