I was thinking about stretching recently. My mother was in town for a few weeks. She’s edging toward her late 70s, is in great shape, and was talking about her yoga class.
She mentioned all the stretching she does for class, and I just kind of nodded absently.
It’s no secret I’m not a big fan of stretching. Most of my life, I never bothered to stretch, and I was fine. Then, when I developed knee pain, a physical therapist advised that I stretch, and at that point, hell, I was willing to try anything. I even thought to myself, “Of course. Stretching. Never did it and look where I am now. Stretching is what I need to do!”
I learned a stretch for my quads that brought me some temporary relief, but the knee pain would soon come back. What’s more, I never got the sense that my knees were really getting better on account of the stretching. So I started to look into stretching, and what I found went into Saving My Knees and also became this five-part series below:
To Stretch or Not to Stretch, Part I
Can Stretching Really Help Fix What Ails Your Knee?
Stretching, Part III: A Critical Look at the Biggest Pro-Stretching Claims
On the Real Benefits of Stretching If You Have Knee Pain
Why Is Stretching So Darn Popular, If Its Benefits Have Been Greatly Oversold?
Still, a lot of people love stretching. It’s like this unquestioned, ingrained thing, and the belief in stretching is really hard to dislodge. Frankly, I doubt it’s worth arguing about. I think you could cite clinical studies that disprove the benefits of stretching until you’re blue in the face, and any diehard stretcher would listen impassively, then go off and start doing some stretches.
I think it’s almost reached the level of religious belief. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s good to take a benign view on such matters. I’m sure some of the things I do now, that I think are helping me in some way, actually aren’t making any difference at all.
My thinking now is, if stretching helps with your knee pain, great, keep doing it. I’d say the same about taking glucosamine (unless you’re diabetic of course).
I’m not sure stretching does any good. But most stretching – if done gently enough, without any strange, hard, twisting forces being put on joints – seems harmless enough.
So if you want to stretch, go for it. Me, I just prefer to warm up. I think that works better.
So for me, doing a BRIEF quad stretch feels good at the time in both muscles and knee joint, but I have had instances where having been prescribed sets of quad stretches for 30s intervals by PTs, I flared the next day (and I hadn't done anything else new). So I am wary of them... they must compress the synovium a lot and make it unhappy (for me the problem is probably synovium and not cartilage although its hard to know for sure).
ReplyDeleteMy husband is a big believer in stretches, and I used to be. There's been so much conflicting info on their benefit. I think they're helpful, but I find trigger point therapy and massage more my cup of tea these days.
ReplyDeleteDitto to everything Heather said. I've had "patello-femoral pain syndrome" in my left knee for four years. It's some kind of running overuse injury that never healed. X-rays, MRIs, and arthroscopy show that structurally my knee is normal (full cartilage thickness and no torn ligaments, tendons, or menisci); so it seems to be some kind of soft tissue irritation, likely involving the synovium. My knee responds badly to stretching. It irritates it somehow and triggers a pain flare that can last for days. Something is getting compressed or otherwise irritated. I wonder sometimes though if I did it regularly, like ever day, it might help over time. I don't want to take the chance though that the opposite would happen. So frustrating to have a chronic pain condition for which there's tons of advice but no real answers.
ReplyDeleteCheers,
Pax
I have PFPS and quad stretching was the single worst bit of advice my PT gave me. My quads are exceptionally tight and stretching them does provide short-term relief, but I think quad tightening is my bodies way of telling me not to put the knee joint into flexion. After 6 months of stretching I'm at rock bottom and finally picked up Richard's book. No stretching the last week and ironically my quads are looser than they've been in months.
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