How Typically to Stretch for Higher Mobility, Much less Ache, and More healthy Getting old

Until you commonly observe yoga or make it a degree to incorporate lunges or butterflies as a part of your ordinary routine, you won’t be stretching a lot on a day-to-day foundation. For many individuals, stretching is reserved for particular moments, like earlier than a exercise or when muscle tissues really feel particularly tight. 

However is it sensible to stretch so occasionally, particularly as getting older naturally reduces mobility and suppleness? And which stretches are literally value doing? 

Well being requested consultants in orthopedics, ache administration, and bodily remedy to share their insights—together with their high stretching suggestions.

Earlier than we get into when you ought to be stretching, it is essential to know what’s truly occurring inside throughout all of that reaching and posing.

Stretching engages two main physique programs: the musculoskeletal system and the nervous system. If you first start to stretch, the spindle reflex initially causes the muscle to contract. Because the stretch is held for longer, the muscle tissues and tendons begin to lengthen. At that time, specialised receptors in muscle tissue—referred to as Golgi tendon organs and muscle spindles—become involved.

These receptors are “monitoring the strain and size of those muscle tissues, sending suggestions to our nervous system about what’s protected and acceptable,” stated Raj Desai, MD, a board-certified doctor of bodily medication and rehabilitation and interventional ache medication in Los Angeles.

Over time, stretching helps prepare the nervous system to tolerate a better vary of movement, added Joseph Hribick, PT, DPT, a medical assistant professor of bodily remedy at Lebanon Valley Faculty. In different phrases: The extra you stretch, the extra you possibly can stretch.

In brief, so much. “Stretching reduces muscle tightness, improves joint mobility, and helps us transfer correctly,” Hribick stated.

Analysis has discovered a hyperlink between even one session of acute stretching and a lower in stiffness, and that acute stretching can enhance vary of movement.

This issues relating to sustaining performance as we age. “It’s not about who can contact their toes or do a break up,” Desai stated. “It’s extra about are you able to cross your legs to place in your footwear or are you able to attain overhead to get one thing?”

However whereas stretching clearly has main advantages, there are some issues it might not do.

In accordance with a 2025 consensus assertion involving 20 consultants, common stretching alone might not reliably stop workout-related bone or joint accidents, enhance posture, or promote restoration after exercising.

And it won’t be a whole repair for all ache and stiffness, which is also brought on by muscle weak point, famous Vijay Jotwani, MD, a major care sports activities medication doctor at Houston Methodist. “Stretching is kind of secondary, in my view, to strengthening,” he stated. “For somebody who’s attempting to get into form, begin with body weight strengthening workout routines.”

Even when stretching doesn’t reside as much as its hype in each space, consultants strongly agree it’s nonetheless value doing.

Although common stretching isn’t a foolproof solution to stop all exercise-related accidents, Hribick stated dynamic stretching—that’s, stretching by means of motion, equivalent to arm circles or leg swings—earlier than exercise can assist cut back your danger.  

He recommends static stretching, or holding a stretch whereas staying nonetheless for a minute or longer, after a exercise to help restoration and long-term flexibility. “For most individuals, average depth is most secure and only,” he famous. 

However stretching each day—no matter whether or not it’s earlier than or after train—can be useful, each within the brief time period and over time.

“5 to 10 minutes of stretching within the morning can actually counteract any stiffness you are feeling, whether or not it’s in your hips, your shoulders, or your again,” Desai stated.