Flexibility training and stretching are the same

This statement simply confuses "training goals" with "tools to achieve goals". The two are not the same thing at all.

Let’s just say, have you ever had this experience? After get off work, I read the blogger's 10-minute shoulder stretch. After the stretch, I felt that my back was stretched. When I raised my hand to touch the opposite shoulder blade, I felt that I had completed the flexibility training today? To put it bluntly, this can only allow you to do a set of effective stretches, but it is still far from true flexibility training.

The fitness circle has been arguing about this for almost ten years. One group is the all-purpose stretching party that focuses on popularizing the stretch. Most of them are yoga bloggers and mass fitness bloggers. Their core logic is that ordinary enthusiasts want functionality. It is enough to be comfortable after stretching and temporarily increase the range of motion. So they simply simplify it to "practicing flexibility is stretching". Anyway, the audience has no competitive needs. If it is complicated, no one will read it. The other group is coaches who engage in competitive training and functional training. They don't recognize this statement at all. In their standards, the core of flexibility is "the ability to exert force stably within the attainable range of joint motion." If you can do the splits just by stretching, you will be shaking like a tumbler when you squat and deadlift. That is called "flabby and useless flexibility" and is not considered a training result at all.

To put it bluntly, flexibility training is like stewing a pot of braised pork at home. Stretching is just the rock sugar used in it. You can use it to enhance the freshness, or you can replace it with honey or white sugar. You can’t just hold a piece of rock sugar and say this is braised pork, right?

Two years ago, I coached a student who was preparing for a half-marathon. At first, he stretched his Achilles tendon every day at home. After two months of stretching, his ankle started to twitch when he ran uphill. He said that the Achilles tendon felt as tight as a stretched rubber band. Later, I changed the plan for him. He would first do 12 sets of single-leg calf raises and eccentrics every day, and then do 10 sets of ankle circumferential resistance. Static stretching was only arranged twice a week, each time for only 5 minutes. Within three weeks, he told me that his ankles were clearly strengthened when running mountains, and they never got stuck again. You see, stretching accounts for less than 20% here, but it is indeed a complete ankle flexibility training system.

In fact, many people confuse the two. The essence is that they fail to distinguish the difference between "temporary flexibility" and "permanent flexibility". If you statically stretch your hamstrings for 30 seconds, the activity level will increase by 10% to 15%. This is a temporary effect caused by the temporary inhibition of the muscle spindles and Golgi tendon organs in the muscles, and the decrease in muscle viscosity. After two hours, it will basically return to its original shape. But real flexibility training is about long-term adaptive changes in the connective tissue of muscles, tendons and even joint capsules, and it also needs to be matched with the improvement of nerve control ability, so that you can stably exert force in a larger range of motion. This thing cannot be done by stretching alone.

When I was practicing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, I encountered bigger pitfalls. At first, I always thought that by pulling my hips every day, I would be able to do crossbars easily. I would lie on the frog for 10 minutes every day before going to bed. I did this for almost a month, but when it came to confrontation, my hips still couldn't open, and I would scream in pain when I was pressed even slightly. Later, the coach directly cut off my static stretching and forced me to do 15 sets of squat jumps and side lunges every day. I was only allowed to stretch my hips for 3 minutes after each technical movement. On the contrary, in less than half a month, my hips were obviously much looser and faster when I was doing the movements, and I was not as stiff as a stone when being pressed. It was then that I realized that if you just relax the muscles, the nerves will not control the movement of that range, which is equivalent to stretching in vain.

Of course, this does not mean that stretching is useless. If you are an ordinary office worker and stretch for 10 minutes every day just to relieve shoulder and neck pain and relax muscles, then there is nothing wrong with calling it "flexibility training". There is no need to lift the bar while holding on to the wrong part. After all, the needs are different. Ordinary people do not need to be able to squat until the hip is lower than the knee and carry 200 kilograms. It is enough.

To put it bluntly, the statement "flexibility training and stretching are the same" is more like a simplified version of popular science for beginners. I am afraid that everyone will not understand the complex training system, so I will give you a simple starting point first. If you really have specific exercise needs, whether you are practicing yoga to unlock the lower back splits, or practicing strength to hit heavy weights, it is best not to equate the two. Otherwise, you will waste a long time practicing, and you may also injure soft tissues due to overstretching, which is not worth the gain.