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.