Stretching: before or after?
A short answer, a longer answer, and permission to stop doing the thing from gym class.
Eamon Walsh, Registered Physiotherapist
October 2025 · 3 min read
Short answer: warm up before, stretch after, and hold the after-stretches only if you enjoy them. The 1990s ritual of long static stretches on cold muscles before activity has aged poorly; it does not prevent injury and can briefly blunt power.
Touching your toes in a cold parking lot is a tradition, not a warm-up.
Before: rehearse, don't lengthen
The job before activity is raising temperature and rehearsing the movements you are about to do. Easy versions of the real thing work best: walk before you run, ski the green before the blue, swing the axe lightly before you split for the woodshed. Five to ten minutes of gradually less-easy is a warm-up. Touching your toes in the cold parking lot is a tradition.
After: if it feels good, it is working
Post-activity stretching is legitimate mostly because it feels good and marks the transition to done. Thirty seconds a stretch, no bouncing, breathe. If you skip it and feel fine, you have lost nothing measurable.
The exception is a specific restriction a practitioner gave you specific work for. That is not stretching philosophy, that is your plan, and the plan wins.