To Stretch, or Not to Stretch?

As a massage therapist and personal trainer/corrective exercise specialist, there are two areas of concern that I deal with on a regular basis, the shoulder girdle and the pelvis. With these there are two areas of the body that are affected the most, the back and the hamstrings. The two areas I’d like to touch on here are the hamstrings and the space between your shoulder blades, namely the rhomboids and middle trapezius. We commonly see people with a forward rounded shoulder posture as well as an anteriorly tilted pelvis. In these two postural distortions the aforementioned muscle groups are in an overstretched position.

The main reason I’ll have a client do a static stretch is to increase or maintain the resting length of a muscle. With the two areas being addressed, the muscles are already in a resting length that exceeds the ideal. Therefore, to stretch these muscles even further will only decrease their strength potential and leave you weaker, increasing the risk of injury. A safe approach here would be for you to stretch the muscle opposite the long underactive muscle, so in the case of the rhomboids, stretch the pecs to allow for the shoulder blades the ability to retract (move back). In the case of the hamstrings (specifically at their attachment/origin on the pelvis) stretch the hip flexors. Increasing the resting length of the hip flexors will allow the ability for the pelvis to tilt back into a neutral position taking tension off of the hamstrings.

I’ll leave this post brief. The point of this post is to inform you that there is a time to stretch a muscle and a time not to. To decrease your risk of injury, increase your strength potential and increase the health of your muscle tissue, it's important to determine the proper course of action.

If you are unaware of how to do that, please seek out the help of a professional. Of course, if you live in the Hudson Valley/ Dutchess County area I’d be happy to be that professional for you - click here to contact me. If not, find a qualified professional in your area. A great list to choose from would be a NASM-educated personal trainer, or a board-certified Licensed Massage Therapist or Physical Therapist.