Stretching our limbs is a natural movement, and full disciplines are dedicated to creating maximum flexibility in the body. From an athlete’s perspective, stretching muscles feels good, and it may create greater range of motion. Where we really see the benefits of stretching, though, is when we combine those stretches with movement in the joints. This is called mobility, which is essentially developing strength through a full range of motion.
People who don’t like stretching will tell you you can develop functional flexibility and mobility through simply doing full range exercises. People who love stretching will tell you you can get plenty of strength and mobility through a dedicated stretching practice. The people I work with are generally in neither camp. They recognize the need for this kind of training, yet don’t prioritize it.
When To Stretch
Most of the debate in recent years on flexibility is based on research around when, in relation to hard training, we should do our stretching. Coaches first noted slower speeds on the track and lower numbers on the lifting platform after static stretching back in the mid twentieth century, and a large volume of research backs this up. A 2012 meta-analysis shows that maximum strength can drop 5-6%, and power numbers about half that, if these exercises follow prolonged static stretches as part of the warm-up.
This is pretty much “common knowledge,” but I have to wonder whether most of us would even be affected by a 2% drop in maximal power for most of our sessions. Further, if stretching before exercise was the only time I could get an athlete to do it…well, I think I’d go for it. Interestingly, research reveals that static stretches held for less than about 45 seconds don’t tend to produce these same declines in strength and power, so if before training is your time to stretch, keep it short.
The question of when to stretch is not so much one of “when to do it around exercise” as much as “when can we get people to do it, at all.” At the end of a session would be wonderful, but way too often, I see my climbers hustling to get one more problem in and then racing out the door of the gym rather than doing an intentional flexibility and warm-down routine.
Thus, my answer on when to stretch is, “whenever I can get you to do it.” I am cool with before exercise, after exercise, days away from exercise, or, as we’ll see below, during your sessions.
How Much Do We Need
Flexibility training is like heart-to-heart conversations—some people just can’t get enough, and others want to avoid the discomfort at any cost. If we happen to be interested in a sport that requires a high degree of mobility (spoiler alert), a lot of time should be dedicated to the practice. I really like the advice I heard from strength coach Mike Boyle several years ago: 30 minutes a day for each decade of your life. If you’re a teenager, one day a week is fine. If you’re in your thirties, 3x per week. If you’re my age, it’s probably easiest just to remember to do it every single day.
I think a person should plan on addressing all of the joints in each session, but if you’re trying to gain ground on a particular joint or muscle, a little more targeted work might be warranted. Like I write above, you can work on getting more flexible or more mobile, and both are going to benefit you. Just like strength training or bouldering, we should be cautious of just sticking with our “pet” exercises…if you can do the splits but can’t hold your arms straight overhead, please, no more splits.
Which Joints Need It Most?
We have different structures of joints throughout the body. Elbows and knees are fairly simple, and few people have mobility limitations there. Wrists and ankles are more complex, but are not normally big limiters for athletes. The shoulders and hips, multi-plane, heavily muscled joints, are the ones where we see the biggest problems. We need these structures to be stable for sport movement, and yet we need them to be capable of full ranges of motion. In climbing, we need to balance the development of high levels of strength with maintaining good movement quality. The simplest way to do this? Include high-force movements in most sessions, and include mobility exercises in those sessions, too.
Structuring Mobility Training
I struggled for years to get my lifters to stretch and my stretchers to lift. I think that people have a natural inclination one way or the other and want to spend most of their time there. Recommending stretching after the session just didn’t seem to work. For a while, we programmed stretching during the last 5 to 10 minutes of a session, but way too often, people would cut the stretching short and leave the gym.
It wasn't until I was looking for a solution to a different problem that we figured out intra-set mobility. The problem was this: most of my athletes would either spend too little time resting in order to get a more fatiguing feeling during the workout or they would finish a set and pull out their phone and zone out for five minutes. I'm not opposed to five minute long rests, but I am opposed to athletes leaving the training mindset during a workout.
What we started doing was building a simple structure into our strength or bouldering sessions. In order to develop more strength, we needed some resting instead of just having the athletes sit around, though, we assigned mobility work. The most functional structures were as follows:
Strength Exercise 1
30-60 seconds of Mobility Exercise 1
Strength Exercise 2
30-60 seconds of Mobility Exercise 2
-or-
Strength Exercise 1
Strength Exercise 2
30-60 seconds of Mobility Exercise 1
Depending on the particular structure of the session, this might be done 2 to 4 rounds. A typical session would find us doing maybe six strength exercises and three mobility exercises.
We also planning this into the Integrated Strength sessions, where we built out three circuits of
General Strength Exercise
Finger Strength Exercise
Mobility Exercise
We’d typically do three rounds of a group like this, and they’d settle in around 15 minutes each. Three circuits would end up landing right about 45 minutes.
I get it. Science tells us this might not be optimal for strength. It’s probably not optimal for mobility, either, but it’s practical. People can and will do it, which is the arena where I spend my time. I am tired to death of armchair athletes arguing about optimization of training while sitting on a couch looking at a phone. If someone comes up with a better idea, with better compliance, I’m all ears. Don’t send me links to research, send me links to results.
On Bouldering Days
How about bouldering? I can’t think of a better time or place for mobility work. Heck, my skin and my feet wear out long before my power fades, so if I can slow the pace of the session with some time on the floor, it’s a big win.
I have two methods for adding mobility work into a bouldering day.
First, you can simply plan to pull off your shoes and do a single mobility drill after every 5 problems or attempts. Good for skin, good for tendons, and you might even drink more water!
The second is to go by time. Ten minutes of bouldering, then shoes off for mobility and rest for 5 minutes. Repeat 3-6 more times.
Good Habits
Mobility is trained well with mobility drills, but it’s also developed through better movement habits. There are a few places where you can address better mobility right away.
- Be sure to use a full range of motion on strength exercises. Common failures are in squat depth, pull-up range, push-up range, and overhead press range. If you think you look awesome, shoot a video and assess it. Asking a strength coach to watch you should get you the right answer. Never sacrifice range for reps.
- Work on longer reaches, higher steps, and spread stances in climbing. This is easier to do in warm-ups and cool downs, but pushing movement is essential to being able to use it when you’re at your limits.
- Sit on the floor or on the ground when possible. Simple, but it addresses so much in the hips and legs. If you can’t do it for more than a few minutes, this is a definite area of potential improvement.
- Stick to shorter, dynamic stretches and drills between exercises, and save the long holds for stretching-only sessions, preferably late in the day.
It’s difficult to improve flexibility as an adult, but maintaining your current flexibility is much more manageable. The tough part of mobility training is that improvement takes a long time and is hard to measure. The greatest source of motivation for most of my climbers is movement. Do you feel like you can get your hands and feet into the proper positions on climbs smoothly and efficiently? Can you stem and high step and draw your body into the wall well? Video is a great tool, as is a sense of mastery. Ask, “Is my sequence and movement worthy of a beta video? An instructional video?”
There is a place between doing a thing optimally and not doing that thing at all. With mobility, we’ve found that intra-set practice finds this sweet spot. Everything in training is some kind of compromise. It’s critical that we don’t miss out on “good enough” just because the timing or duration isn’t optimal.