Article 3 – Flexibility

When I was going through my basic training, we had a Physical Training Instructor called Phil. Now Phil was, to our minds, obsessed by flexibility; or, as he used to put it in his broad Yorkshire accent ‘Yuv got ta work on yur flexibiliteeeeeh’. Being young and not a little bit daft, we spent many a happy hour stalking around our accommodation, ambushing unsuspecting colleagues and screaming ‘flexibiliteeeeeeeeh!’ into their ears as loud as possible in an outrageous Brian Glover accent. We may have laughed then but I now realise, 9 years later, that our Phil was spot on. In fact, thinking back, Phil must have been in his late forties but was still a superb competitive cyclist and was fitter than all of my course put together: an ideal advert for the benefits of flexibiliteeeeeeh. Sorry - I’ll start calling it flexibility from now on. Old habits die hard, you know?

Exercise scientists now believe that good flexibility is key to gaining and maintaining fitness and – I should probably take more note of this myself – preventing injury. So, why is flexibility so important?

Exercise involves repeatedly contracting muscles; for example, when running, your calf muscle stretches as the foot strikes the floor and the body moves forward and then contracts strongly to help propel us forward. As we continue to repeatedly contract and exercise the muscle, it gets stronger (see my first article). There is a problem though: the muscle never goes through its full range of motion as, on every stride, it stops short of full tension (contraction) or full flexion (relaxation). This reduces the elasticity of the muscle and causes the tightness we feel after exercise. Furthermore, tightness in one muscle can effect other parts of the body – tight hamstrings (the back of your upper leg) can cause a tight lower back which, in turn, can lead to long-term lower-back pain. Inflexibility of ankles can cause imbalance in your running technique, which can lead to ankle, knee, leg and back pain. In fact, a lot of people with sciatic nerve problems are advised to stretch regularly to reduce the pressure on the nerve as it winds its way from the lower back down to the foot. So, there’s one very good reason to work on your flexibiliteeeh. Sorry, ‘flexibility’.

And there’s more! Imagine your normal running stride is, say, 50 inches. You work on your quadricep and hip flexor flexibility over a few months and find that your stride length is now 51 inches. If you used to take 2000 strides in a race, you can now either take a fewer number of strides to run the same distance in the same time or, you can maintain your stride rate and finish 2000 inches (166 feet or 48 metres) ahead of where you would have been. This may equate to a time of 30 or 40 seconds off your personal best! In other sports, particularly swimming, flexibility is key to an efficient body movement. It has also been suggested that stretching after exercise improves the recovery process by helping to remove lactic acid (see my last article) from the muscles.

The vast majority of professional athletes stretch not only before and after a training session, but often dedicate a regular block of maybe a whole hour or more per week to stretching and flexibility in their training programmes. And, as I’ve said before, if it’s good enough for the professionals, it’s good enough for us.

So, when and how should we stretch?

Most people stretch before and after exercise. However, the best time to do it is when the muscles are warm and supple, ie, after you’ve finished your training session. Some say that stretching beforehand is a good idea too, as long as you have done a gentle warm up first; the jury’s still out on this and it really comes down to individual preference. My suggestion is that you ensure you have a good progressive warm up before you start the hard stuff in your training session; if you have a particular muscle that’s always tight, maybe now is the time for some very gentle stretching – remember, it still isn’t particularly supple yet. However, the main focus of your stretching should be at the end of your training session.

Ideally, immediately following your warm down, you should carry out about 15 minutes of stretching, concentrating on the muscles you have been working hard. Each stretch should be held for about 15-20 seconds and this is why: when you try to stretch a muscle, it initially tries to oppose you by contracting. After about 5-8 seconds of a stretch, you can feel the muscle relax a bit. It is only then that the stretch actually starts having any beneficial effect and you can go a little deeper. Stretch each muscle 2-3 times, depending on how hard you have worked and how the muscle feels.

When you do stretch, there are a few more key pointers you should bear in mind:

There are other types of stretching that some people prefer to do and believe to be more effective but they are down to individual preference and need be taught properly. I will not go into them any further here.

After club running sessions, by all means join in with the group stretch but you may also wish to concentrate on specific muscles afterwards (personally, I get tight calf muscles so I do quite a lot of calf stretching). Indeed, stretching is a very individual thing as we are all made differently and should make sure that our own needs are met through stretching. It is always a good idea to stretch again at home after club and, really, you should stretch everyday to maintain elasticity.

So which stretches should we do? Well, again, it’s down mainly to individual preference but I’ll detail what I do after running sessions and it should give you an idea of some of the key areas:

There are plenty of other ways to get flexible, such as yoga and pilates and these are often a good way to do what is essentially quite a boring activity. You can stretch at work or at home: while sitting at a desk and working, you can stretch the lower back, the ankles and calf muscles, the shoulders, etc.

So, I hope I’ve persuaded you that stretching is a good thing and should be as much an important part of your training as tempo and speed sessions. It should help prevent injury and improve your performance at the same time – there aren’t many things that can do that! But remember that stretching is an individual thing and it should be tailored to your specific needs.

And anyway, Phil would be well upset if you didn’t work on your – for the last time, I promise - flexibiliteeeehhh!

Over the next few articles, I’ll try and put something together on strength training and also on cross-training, that is mixing your sports to prevent injury and maintain interest. Of course, any feedback on the articles I’ve done so far would be much appreciated.

Again, here are some good sites for training articles I have used. There are many more on the internet but these are particularly useful and are well worth a look. If you know of any other good sites, let me know and I’ll ask Brian to add them to the website. I’ll probably also list some readable books on training.

www.triathletes-uk.org - Excellent Turbo Training Articles

www.xtri.com - Triathlon website with stacks of articles on all sorts of things.

www.tridu.com - Same again.

www.kjerag.com - Multisport site.