You Don’t Need To Stretch After Your Workout For Better Flexibility

Liv Townsend, flexibility coach, explains why:

Some of the claimed benefits are a bit of a stretch

The reason you don’t need to stretch after a workout to improve flexibility is because research doesn’t show meaningful benefits for recovery, soreness, or muscle “relengthening.”

On which note: contrary to a myth floating around, muscles don’t permanently shorten from strength training, so there’s nothing that needs to be “stretched back out” after a session.

To bust a few further myths: post-workout stretching also doesn’t meaningfully reduce delayed-onset muscle soreness, speed up recovery, or “flush out lactic acid”.

So, why do you sometimes feel tight after a workout? It’s just because of increased blood flow (the “pump”) and/or fatigue affecting how smoothly your muscles contract and relax, that’s all.

In reality, lifting through a full range of motion already stretches your muscles under load, which can improve flexibility as effectively—or sometimes more effectively—than passive stretching. For this reason, movements that allow deeper ranges contribute more to flexibility than partial-range exercises.

That said, passive stretching does still have a role, because static stretching (a kind of passive stretching) improves flexibility by training your nervous system to tolerate more stretching, which is different from what strength training provides.

Still, the timing of when you do that doesn’t matter much; stretching works through consistent exposure over time, not because it’s done immediately after a workout.

A practical approach instead: if you’re short on time and/or dislike post-workout stretching, skip it and instead do dedicated stretching sessions 2x per week for 10–15 minutes.

For more on all of this, enjoy:

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Want to learn more?

You might also like:

Overdone It? How To Speed Up Recovery After Exercise ← for what actually helps in that regard!

PS: this above-linked article of ours also cites some of the research being talked about above, and further details how post-workout stretching probably won’t help—so you know we’re singing from the same songsheet on this one!

Take care!