Stretching sore muscles after exercise

[sirshred]

You make it pretty clear that if I'm sore from stretching then I should wait before stretching those muscles again. But I'm curious to hear your opinion about stretching muscle groups that are sore from exercise.

Thanks!

[Nathan]

Hey there, welcome to the forums!

I am not Kit, but I will quote a few of his words from this excellent article (that I suggest you also read in full), and then I will extrapolate to address your specific question.

Quote

...in our work, we distinguish between mobility (we call it limbering) and stretching. Limbering is re-attaining yesterday’s flexibility. Stretching (using many techniques) takes you into new ranges of movement.
...
This frequency of practise recommendation is because you will be sore after doing a serious session on any one particular part. You will be using contractions, and a number of other neural techniques to momentarily increase your ROM, and then you need to recover.
...
“Recovery” is the least understood aspect of adaptation, but let me spell it out here: “stretching” as an action is simply the stressor, or the trigger, for adaptations that happen over the next 72 (or more) hours.
...
The ‘not doing’ is the most important secret, assuming you have done the right exercises, and this is because the body absolutely needs time to recover from any serious stretching.
...
You need to do mobility exercises daily, but not to the point of trying to improve ROM. This is subtle. Mobility work is to recapture yesterday’s flexibility and is done to keep things loose.

There is a lot packed into these few short sentences, but several key points:

• The distinction between limbering and stretching
• Soreness as a sign of a stressor having been applied
• Adaptation happening during the recovery period

So, to address your question specifically... Soreness is a sign that there has been a stressor of adequate intensity to trigger adaptation. Whether that stressor was stretching or some other exercise, the adaptation still happens during the recovery period. If you add an additional stressor during recovery, you spread your recovery resources more thinly and adaptation takes longer, or worse, may even be stunted. (The conversation is really far more nuanced than this, but let's keep it simple since we're in the Starter Course forum!) However, limbering is not intense enough to trigger the soreness and adaptation we're talking about here, so it can (should) be done daily, even when sore, and will actually help with recovery as it will encourage blood flow to recovering tissues and keep the CNS familiar with established ranges.

Remember that you can pair your intense stretching with your other exercise sessions. Exercise can be a great "warm-up" for your stretching!

[sirshred]

that helps a lot. Thanks for such a clear explanation 

[Kit_L]

Adding a brief comment to Nathan's excellent summary, in my view, strength training is the best warm-up for stretching. Way too many people use stretching as a warmup for strength training, and in my experience, that is almost a complete waste of time and you could hurt yourself, too. On the other hand, after any weight training session, the muscles are completely warm – you will feel resistance to the stretching when you first start, but that resistance will very quickly melt away, you will find. And if you want to get really loose legs and hips, you really have to do that work at a high level of intensity to get that softness to appear. But as Nathan said above, this is the beginner's forum, so we are getting a bit ahead of ourselves here!