Should I stretch?

Back in my hockey glory days, our on-ice warmups would be fairly short. We'd get anywhere between 3-5 minutes to get the blood pumping, get a feel for the puck, and warm up our goalie. We'd have so little time to get ready to play, yet without fail, a good chunk of those critical minutes were spent stretching. If you pop in to any rink in the GTHL you'll see kids doing the same stretches we were doing back in the day.

Originally, I blamed slowly adapting hockey culture but I may have been quick to judge. The body of research on stretching before and after activity is gigantic and often conflicting. So, I decided this week to do a deep dive into the evidence for and against static stretching (think of those toe touches you've been avoiding) to see if I could make sense of it all. Here's what I found:

According to a systematic review published in the Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine, an acute bout of stretching does not improve force or jump height, with contradictory results for running speed. However, it has been shown that stretching regularly can improve force, jump height, AND speed. What does this mean? It means that timing matters. Stretching is an important part of any routine, however, it is best done after or separate from activity, with the goal of long term improvement rather than short term performance boosts.

If not static stretching, what should be included in our warm up? Generally, a warm up to reduce impairments and increase performance should be composed of aerobic activity (anything that gets your heart rate up), followed by large amplitude dynamic stretching (big movements with multiple joints involved), and sport-specific dynamic activities (think shooting pucks, passing drills, running plays, etc.). Athletes in sports that require a lot of static flexibility should use short duration (~30s per muscle group) static stretches with lower intensity to reduce the likelihood of impairment.

So, when you're at your next GTHL or beer league game, maybe save the groin stretches for post-game, unless of course you're doing them at centre ice to intimidate your opponent. As we all know, chirping is a crucial part of any hockey warm up.

Next week, we'll answer another burning question: Should I foam roll? Stay tuned!