WHY STRENGTH TRAINING IS SUPERIOR TO STRETCHING FOR MANAGING AND PREVENTING INJURY
i think this topic pretty much goes without saying at this point. The training industry has done a great job collectively in convincing the public and educating trainers and coaches on what truly matters in both preventing and treating injuries. Progressive Overload, tissue remodeling techniques, inflammation support, active recovery, strength tests, and more are common practices used through strength training that help heal and strengthen various injuries. I want to introduce some more research on the topic, another training law, and some basic logic to help you further appreciate what you may be missing when it comes to lingering issues and potential problems you might be facing.
Why did they tell us to stretch?
I simply have no idea. Somehow I guess the mindset was that when we were performing whatever movement we got hurt doing, the muscle was restricted and inflexible enough to execute it properly. However, upon further inspection, if anyone ever took a course through NASM back in the day, or elsewhere, and practiced Goniometric Testing procedures, then you would quickly see that when you manually tested each joint and muscle group's flexibility, stretching wasn't the issue. Almost always, athletes or clients possess plenty of reserve range of motion or freedom to move in sports or recreationally. In a desperate and often predictable attempt to argue this reality, ignorant authorities will argue "extreme" examples of stretching or movement that simply aren't encountered or necessary in 99% of situations.
Individuals with tremendous flexibility/mobility, generally have congenital laxity in their joints and hormonal differences that "naturally enable bizarre body positions that people are enamored of or weirded out by.
My mentor Kelly Baggett pioneered the term "Limits of Flexibility" about 20 years ago, and science since then has backed him up tenfold, and adopted the same concept called "Angle of Peak Torque." Put simply, muscles are most powerful with sharper joint angles and a more limited range of motion. This is why you see people squat more weight in quarter squat positions and actually why explosive quarter squats are linked to greater speed. Read here. Just look at literally any athletic movement or everyday pattern, and you will see a small to moderate degree of stretch (i.e., length-tension relationship). It's that sweet spot that our neuromuscular system has identified to allow greater efficiency and performance in motion. Moreover, coaches make the fatal mistake of trying to get too detailed and fix this natural strategy. Just give basic cues, proven setups and drills, and practice volume in competitive situations and watch the development unfold.
Wolf's Law
Continuing with NASM, their corrective exercise manual/course addressed a fundamental principle that strongly supports strength training, in that soft tissue models along the lines of stress. What this means is that if we move properly before, during, and after injury with the appropriate load and volume threshold and tolerance, then we will effectively build stronger, more parallel, and more resistant muscle fibers that will be much harder to break. Furthermore, you will re-educate and store proper movement and coordination in the nervous system. And if you really want to take advantage of creating strong fibers, then be sure to include very tense isometric contractions. Dr. Weingroff introduced to me years ago "The Piezoelectric Effect," which stimulates magnetic fields within the muscles that allow for more collagen being mapped and laid down. Pretty cool stuff.
The Rubber Band Analogy
I've been dealing with this dogma for years with clients, and learning analogies are always helpful to paint a clear picture for clients or athletes. Rubber bands possess varying densities and elastic properties just like soft tissue. Many times people who are new to strength training, or picking back up again, who are weak or have poor size will be the ones complaining about muscle strains and pains. Not always, but more often than not this is indeed the case. I've always used a comparison of a very thin low-tension theraband and a very dense super band, and would ask my clients which band do you think is going to tear or break first? Without fail, it's the thicker and denser band, and this is exactly the case with our working muscles as well. Aside from some bird study that showed extreme stretching can increase growth, there isn't a lot of evidence to support stretching for improving muscle size, recovery, or injury in humans, unfortunately. However, aggressive stretching may open up some constrictive fascia and enable hypertrophy according to some authorities on the matter, so it wouldn't hurt to add in some on recovery days.
But only strength training through the entire muscle contraction spectrum is going to yield true gains in tissue density, size, and strength.
Strength is King!
Here is an infographic from a study compliments of Dr. Ramsey Nijem. Now there is plenty of preliminary research that supports everything above, but the more the merrier in the case of stretching and the public's everlasting reluctance to question its efficacy. Strength training is the runaway victor in preventing injury (68%), and proprioception comes in at a distant second. Stretching takes the bronze and literally has no significant effect on preventing injury.
" But the injury prevention data are just as impressive.
Large meta-analyses have shown that strength training can reduce non-contact injury risk by as much as 68%.
Not stretching and certainly not trendy corrective exercises.
Strength training.
Getting stronger appears to make athletes more capable of tolerating the demands of sport.
Athletes who stay healthy train more, develop more, and compete more.
Availability is performance, and the best ability is availability."
This isn't groundbreaking news, but it's still heavily suppressed in the mainstream. Just please do me a solid and consider the nature of stretching relative to real-world training environments and sport settings. I don't think any human who wasn't injured walking the face of the earth was so severely fragile that they partially tore or overstretched a muscle through static stretching a muscle. Yet this is somehow the everlasting go-to when it comes to preventing or treating injury for some odd reason.
When someone gets injured, there was some level of load (gravity, momentum, resistance, opponent contact, ground contact) involved in an eccentric or stretched position (i.e., planting your foot, loading your arm, rapid trunk rotation, etc.). We can tear a muscle that is shortened too, but this isn't as common according to plenty of research. So aside from specific loaded movement training, which should be a part of everyone's program, a well-balanced, structured strength program (push, pull, press, row, squat, dead, rotate, carry) is going to do wonders in addressing all total body or systemic weakness. Strength training involves some unique equipment to provide resistance along with bodyweight, but it's the closest thing to replicate work demands and loads that could initiate or irritate injury, and it obviously signals better development of strength and size for better support and health. Last but not least, strength training kills two birds with one stone and serves as a form of "Loaded Stretching" especially when you work through full ranges of motion.
"And the buck doesn't stop there, ladies and gentlemen:
"The data make it clear that strength training is not just for sport performance and injury mitigation.
Higher levels of strength have been associated with:
Lower mortality risk
Better outcomes in cancer patients
Reduced symptoms of depression
Improved long-term health
The same quality we chase in high-performance sport may also help people live longer and healthier lives."
Case in point is "Stan the Man." This guy is 80+ years old and absolutely crushing a "Zig-Zag Sled Push." The benefits of this drill are many. Age is just an excuse and an illusion.
Neuromuscular Deficits
Dr. John Rusin coined this coordination-based cause of injury perfectly: If you refer back to the infographic earlier, proprioception of the neural input coming to the back to the brain from your working limbs also helps prevent injury. Why? Well, this is just fancy talk for features of coordination, which is and always has been a huge player in injury prevention and treatment. Eccentric, Concentric, and Isometric contractions during movement occur in miliseconds often times. Not enough time to process and think about what we are doing, so we rely on built-in movement monitoring features that operate instantly and without conscious thought. Pretty amazing to say the least. Any delay or error in feedback or focus can result in poor coordination and decision-making, which could lead to injury. For example, your muscles work in functional units known as "Sarcromeres." If you are running near max velocity and decide to cut and change direction rapidly, every unit of the muscle needs to possess proper timing and rhythm so that one section doesn't stretch too far or shorten excessively. Fatigue, focus, or a lack of awareness and coordination can disrupt this movement necessity and cause injury. Also consider the hundreds of working muscles you have in your body and all of the functional units within each muscle and you can see the potential opportunity of injury, and why coordination routinely ranks second to strength in studies for injury risk. Lack of coordination and precise movement is probably much more common than the human eye can detect, but having tremendous strength naturally enables a lot of room for error, fortunately.
Protective Tension
Credit Eric Cressey for coining the term years ago. We are very hyperaware creatures with tremendous instincts when it comes to survival. This notion also applies to the way we move as well. A classic example can be seen in the hamstrings when they are being overworked in the most common lordotic body posture.
Have you ever noticed that even though your hamstrings are long and flexible enough, they often carry a lot of tightness and tension when walking, running, or even stretching? It's counterintuitive since we understandably associate tightness with a lack of flexibility/mobility, but in many cases the hamstrings are actually too long proximally near the hip (see photo above). In essence, they are protecting us and signaling tension to make us self-aware and recognize they are overworking and will eventually weaken and become injured on some level if we don't correct the issue.
It's just like a false alignment on your vehicle causing certain tires to wear quicker and other working parts. The body is really no different in that it needs structural balance. You can also see this same effect in the traps with a dip in shoulder level, causing them to stay tense and active even though they are flexible and have good muscle length.
Beware of The Corrective Exercise Guru
This classic character is what prompted me to write this piece for you. These guys are a dime a dozen and prey on your ignorance. They are usually the very poor athlete who always sat on the bench and vastly underperformed in the weight room. And it's this fear or inability that they project onto clients, athletes, coaches, and the industry itself because they don't have much to show for, unfortunately. So of course you can't really expect them to appreciate and understand the real value of proper strength training, because they haven't been through the ringer and suffered what it takes to become truly and undeniably strong.
Speaking of can't, this is the exact rhetoric that these individuals typically use with all of their clients to promote their own chosen path of weakness and/or ignorance. I suppose this message has become a bit of an epidemic, but there are always more people can do than can't, and this should be the main focus when coaching. Be aware of regular limitations being discussed coupled with little noticeable progress, regardless of where you are on your training journey. This is dangerous because it doesn't provide affirmation, which is proven to work in psychology, and conditions your subconscious for negative thinking and that whole rabbit hole you don't want or ever need to go down.
I suppose the saddest thing about The Corrective Exercise Guru is they run their mouth almost more than anyone, and hate on the exact proven methods and people that carry the biggest impact and potential influence to make the biggest difference in the industry. Just avoid them at all costs, and hopefully they finally figure it out, get with the program, and start to dominate. I never wish bad on anyone, even though that may have come off harsh to some, but it's the truth.
The Exception
There are almost always exceptions in training, and in some unique situations (elderly training, severe injury states, morbidly obese), corrective exercise progressions may be all that one can do, but there should always still be a strength theme involved, and you can get very creative here. It's also important to note that there is a fine line between corrective exercises and strength training, and some natural overlap between the two. It's a blurry line that isn't completely clear, and oftentimes corrective exercises can be building strength and vice versa. Bottomline, is that the corrective exercise menu has expanded exponentially over the years. One distinction you can make between the two to remove some confusion is training load.
Strength Training=High Training Load Potential
Corrective Exercise=Low Training Load Potential
Corrective Exercise Hybrids are an interesting option as well, as they limit load potential and keep things more corrective in nature. These combo movements can improve fatigue (i.e. Obese) cure muscle imbalances, improve coordination (mitigate injury risk), and increase intensity without adding direct load or resistance.
And in some instances, some people just may need a friend or social support, and there is nothing wrong with a trainer serving more as a friend as long as that expectation is established at the onset and that's the primary goal. I've had some clients like that in the past as well which was great.
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