5 Stretches to Retire From Your Regimen
Stretching is something we all do, sometimes even unconsciously. If you are like most people, when you were in middle school gym the class always started with a stretch routine. Your gym coach would probably make you do some jumping jacks, touch your toes, stretch your shoulders, and do a few other things. Now whether you stretch to achieve an athletic goal or simply because you feel you have to, we will tackle 5 common stretches in your routine that you should replace. When used effectively, stretching can be good for mobility, strength gains, and injury prevention. However, that is only true if you do the correct stretches, with proper form, and at the right time.
For example, static stretching is often interpreted as a warm up which it is not. Think of stretching a cold muscle that is not warmed up like pulling a cold brittle rubber band. It weakens it rather than making it more flexible. On top of that, overstretching can also throw off our mind muscle connection by temporarily lengthening certain muscles. This is why, contrary to what most people believe, stretching before a workout does nothing to lower the risk of injury [1]. And stretching an injured muscle to relax it will actually more likely aggravate it more. You will almost certainly be better off using ice, heat, and physical therapy to heal muscle injuries.
Finally, stretching muscles that are already overstretched and underactive (like stretching the glutes after a day of sitting) can make muscle imbalances go from bad to worse. This literally does the opposite of what stretching is supposed to do, and some of these stretches below will do just that. So without further of do here are 5 stretches you should stop doing along with better alternatives!
1. Across the Shoulder Stretch
Ask yourself this, what are you doing? This stretch literally already does what a day of sitting does. It contracts the muscles in the front part of our shoulder causing our posture to round forward just like what happens with a day of sitting.
Alternative:
Cactus Stretch
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Opt instead for a stretch that externally rotates our shoulders, such as the cactus pose. It is an especially helpful stretch to do in between long periods of sitting to undo slouching.
2. Touching your Toes
It is always a surprise how almost most people even some trainers don’t seem to know how to most safely and effectively stretch their hamstrings. Sure, reaching for your toes like we’ve been told to do our entire lives does stretch the hamstrings but it also puts your lumbar spine at a very compromising position. This makes the back most often the limiting factor of the stretch rather than the hamstrings.
Alternative:
Hip Hinge Stretch
To stretch our hamstring while simultaneously protecting our lumbar spine, we need to keep our spine in an anterior tilt when performing a hamstring stretch. A Hip Hinge Stretch does just that. Simply dig in with your forward heal and hinge forward as much as you can while maintaining a flat back. You can also make this stretch even more effective by turning it into an active stretch. Simply alternate which heal goes first and continue walking forward.
3. Standing Quad Stretch
While this stretch will not necessarily cause a whole lot of damage, it quite frankly doesn’t do anything either. First off, unless you are an athlete most of us typically are not dealing with tight quads so it really does not make sense to stretch a muscle that isn’t tight. What is tight from sitting most of the day are our hip flexors. Those are the muscles we should be getting more mobility out of. Only the rectus femoris muscle is part of both the Quadriceps and the hip flexor groups of muscles and standing quad stretches don’t reach it or any of the other hip flexor muscles very effectively. On top of that, if you have trouble with balance, keeping that balance becomes the limiting factor of the stretch rather than range of motion. There are much better ways of staying flexible in our lower body.
Alternatives:
Foam Rolling (For stiff quads)
Pigeons and Kneeling Lunges (To Stretch our Hip Flexors)
If you do have stiff quads that are substantially hurting your mobility, your best bet is to perform some foam rolling to help loosen up some of those deeper quadriceps muscles. If you are a sedentary person with tight hip flexors you would be best served with stretches targeting hip flexor mobility such as pigeon stretches and kneeling lunges to name a couple. Just be sure to keep your spine in a neutral position when performing those stretches.
4. Tricep Stretch
We all have done this stretch at some point in our lives and likely commonly see others doing it as well. Quite honestly though, it really doesn’t do anything. There is really no reason to stretch our triceps like that, it does not accomplish anything as far as our overall flexibility and mobility goes.
Alternatives:
Tricep Strength Training
The best way to build mobility and prevent injury in your arms is to perform strength workouts. When utilizing proper technique and range of motion, strength training is what will alleviate stiff arms since your muscles are constantly contracting and relaxing to move a weight. For this purpose, workouts such as tricep extensions that target the triceps directly, or push workouts such as a dumbbell press that require tricep assistance will be your best bet to maintain a strong and mobile upper body.
5. Windshield Wipers
Alternatives:
Thoracic Stretch with a Stick
While we want to maintain a stable lower back and strong core, when it comes to our upper back we want an increased amount of mobility. A mobile thoracic spine is key to preventing upper cross syndrome, the infamous upper back hump that we try to avoid. For that reason we should use a stretch like this one to directly target thoracic mobility while keeping the lower back a fairly neutral position.
Leo Gabriel, Revivalize Inc.
Sources:
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24100287/