Stretching for runners

The ASICS Running Clinics’ professional Physiotherapist Sarah Connors gives us her advice on the hot topic of stretching for runners.

Stretching has been a controversial topic over the years. However, from a physiotherapist’s experience in treating countless running injuries, there are key areas that are repeatedly overloaded when running. If these areas are left tight and short, they can contribute to a majority of the running injuries.

What exactly is stretching?
It is the method used to maintain flexibility; it’s about taking joints through their full range of motion and increasing the blood and nutrient supply. This is important for keeping cartilage nourished and healthy, reducing stiffness and maintaining correct musculoskeletal alignment.

Try to incorporate a dynamic warm up, such as arm rotations and leg swings prior to running which will get the muscles warm, loose and in a good state to exercise.

It is also important to include a stretching session in your weekly training and to do a few key stretches as part of your warm down to help unwind the body from the effects of running.

Over time regular stretching can maintain the muscle length or even lengthen it further, and sometimes restore it to its optimal functioning length.

And why does this matter?
Running involves repeated contractions of specific muscles over a long period of time. This can leave the muscle fibres shorter in length than normal and misaligned (like hair that needs combing).

Stretching is the process physiotherapists use to restore muscles to their resting length and realign these fibres. Without it, we run the risk of allowing muscles to shorten permanently (by a process called adaptive shortening) which alters the function of the joints that the muscles are connected to. For example, if the hip flexors (which work very hard in running) tighten and shorten, they pull the front of the pelvis down and throw the lower back out of alignment, which can many other knock-on effects.

So, while we can’t categorically say that stretching will reduce the risk of injury or improve performance, it will help to restore muscles to their resting length after the continual contraction involved in running. And it will help runners maintain the range of motion in the joints preventing tightness and imbalances between muscle groups.