Can You Stretch Too Much?

Hello.

I'm in the midst of a serious attempt to become more limber.

I'm not doing any gymnastics, I'm mobilizing myself to improve my form in weightlifting. Mainly for squats.

I'm willing to put a LOT of time and effort into this. But I'm wondering, is there such a thing as too much stretching? Is there a rough maximum of time, a day, that you can stretch before it stops yielding results, or even becomes harmful?

Yes, there is such a thing as stretching too much. There are two ways of improving flexibility: tissue elongation, and CNS adaptation. In tissue elongation, your muscles and tendons actually become longer, which increases your maximal ROM. In CNS adaptation, your nervous system learns to allow a greater range of motion before it reflexively contracts the muscles to prevent damage. The goal of stretching is to improve *both* of these factors. 

Tissue elongation requires very deep, long stretches. Similar to how you gain strength and muscle by damaging the muscle to force it to grow back bigger and stronger, your tissues elongate when you stretch them to the point where you cause very small micro-tears, and they grow back slightly longer. This process of growing back takes time, and doing heavy stretching before your tissues have had a change to recover from the last session is counter-productive. If you notice that you are sore after a session of heavy stretching, that is good; it means you've successfully elicited a supercompensation response. But you need to rest to give your body time to recover, so don't do any heavy stretching until you're not longer sore in the areas you stretched. If you do heavy stretching while you're still sore, that is stretching too much. 

CNS adaptation is efficiently trained with PNF stretching. Because it does not damage the tissues very much, you can do PNF stretching much more frequently. 

And in order to maintain your range of motion, it's important to try to at least move through your full maximal ROM about once a day. If you don't, you'll find that you tend to slowly lose flexibility over time. 

What about the speed of gaining?

Is it the same as with strength? Like the more flexible you are the slower the gains come.

Or is it linear?

Edgaron said:

What about the speed of gaining?

 

Is it the same as with strength? Like the more flexible you are the slower the gains come.

 

Or is it linear?

Unfortunately I don't know the answer to this. I'd have to guess that you will find diminishing returns the more flexible you become. But initially you should be able to acquire quite a lot of flexibility in a reasonable time period. 

Edgaron said:

What about the speed of gaining?

 

Is it the same as with strength? Like the more flexible you are the slower the gains come.

 

Or is it linear?

This is not quite an answer but I'd be willing to guess that even minimal gains in flexibility will be quite rewarding, so enjoy the journey. This requires a sensible approach just like most things - the goal is to be more flexible and move better, so follow the path that takes you there. Which path is that exactly and how fast will you get there? I can't say but who cares? If you're goal is to squat 500 lbs, you may take a different route/different schedule than I would to do the same.

In my experience, stretching is much like building strength - a sometimes uncomfortable but rewarding process. The CNS adaptation, particularly relaxing while uncomfortable and allowing the NS to adapt, can be a very difficult thing at first. However, the more you do it, the easier it becomes. In a way, I suppose, once your learn to feel what is happening in your body, I think you will find the stretches becomes more effective and less uncomfortable. You may even begin to enjoy it. You will certainly begin to feel good once they are done.

It's better to do less in a stretch and then repeat it with a little more effort than to try too hard in your initial attempt.

Hope that helps and didn't sound preachy.

I'm wondering does increasing the length of the muscle improve or harm strength and force generation? I know that's a broad question but specifically, my hamstrings are pretty tight and pike stretch damn bad.  However, I have read that tight hamstrings may be a good thing for ones running and jumping . To me it seems if one has more flex one's stride could be somewhat longer but perhaps not storing as much energy as when everything is taut. 

Another question is if muscle fibers get longer do they also get thinner, like when rolling dough?  If so, can they then get thicker from accretion and perhaps end up having more mass and become stronger than before stretching?  

On the other hand I've read that muscles don't really elongate. I mean, the insertion and attachment haven't changed so how could they be any longer really?

 The elongation of the muscle isn't going to be enough to significantly impact sprinting performance. Unless, of course, you're Usain Bolt and competing for a world record where the difference between 9.8s and 9.59s in the 100m actually matters. For all practical matters, this is literally not worth thinking about. The majority of the elongation is just going to be the amount of stretch your CNS and fascia allows, and does not constitute actual sarcomere additions.

In any case, muscle is not the same as putty or dough. Muscle has clearly defined structures, and when it DOES lengthen it does not become thinner. You will have the same number of myofibers in parallel. Studies on a number of animals show that some stretching protocols can actually make the muscle thicker via hyperplasia.

I'm not getting into the elongation anymore here, other than to say, once again, that the addition of sarcomeres in series changes the potential maximum length of a muscle, not its resting length.

The sprint performance due to fatigue or metabolites accumulation from static stretching doesn't concern me - it's just temporary. It's more the structural changes. But if that's pretty much irrelevant to recreational performance that's fine by me.

It's not an area I'm familiar with, but if stretching increases muscle fascicle length, and fascicle length correlates positively with contraction speed and sprint performance (as reported) - it might even help. A little.

FutureisNow said:

The sprint performance due to fatigue or metabolites accumulation from static stretching doesn't concern me - it's just temporary. It's more the structural changes. But if that's pretty much irrelevant to recreational performance that's fine by me.

 

It's not an area I'm familiar with, but if stretching increases muscle fascicle length, and fascicle length correlates positively with contraction speed and sprint performance (as reported) - it might even help. A little.

If you are like most sprinters, even the top guys, you have more to gain by learning how to relax your neck & shoulders than worry about the length of your muscle fascicle

As a rule, sprinters hate stretching with a passion and will re-invent every excuse to avoid it. (we invented these a generation ago! )

Not a sprinter although sometimes sprint but have the mentality I guess  It's certainly a chore. 

Doing tons of it I think deadens the personality as well. 

FutureisNow said:

Doing tons of it I think deadens the personality as well. 

There's one of those sprinter-style excuses 

All the contortionists I know have very lively personalities. Quit whining and get stretching. 

FutureisNow said:

Doing tons of it I think deadens the personality as well. 

Is there a "don't like" button somewhere here?