It is time to ditch the intense stretching sessions that encourage you to push yourself past the point of pain in the name of being more limber. An exciting new study from the University of South Australia has discovered it takes as little as eight minutes each week to optimise flexibility progress.

The first study of its kind to identify optimal parameters for stretching saw researchers examine the impacts of static stretching. The method is used when you lengthen a muscle and hold the position for a predetermined amount of time. UniSA researcher Dr Lewis Ingram says it is the most common type of stretching and it is both safe and effective.

“It is used extensively by sports medicine practitioners and coaches to improve flexibility for rehabilitation and performance, but despite this, there is no consensus about the optimal dosage parameters for increasing flexibility, says Dr Ingram. “In this study, we wanted to find out how long, how hard, and how often someone should stretch to increase their flexibility.”

The results showed all that was needed was a static stretch to be held for up to three minutes, or eight minutes throughout the week, to improve the flexibility of that muscle. Stretching to the point of discomfort or pain was found to add no extra benefit.

The researchers, including Dr Ingram, were surprised to learn that the flexibility improvements maxed out at three minutes per muscle per session and at eight minutes per muscle per week.

“Specifically, in the case of the latter, it doesn’t seem to matter how often a week you spend stretching, so long as you accumulate eight minutes over the week.”

The study systemically reviewed and meta-analysed data from 188 studies involving 8,095 adults from 25 countries. Their findings show that a single session of static stretching led to a moderate increase in flexibility, while longer-term static stretching conducted regularly over a few weeks led to a larger increase.

“These improvements occurred irrespective of the specific muscle group, the intensity of the stretch, the person’s sex, their health or training status, and the frequency of weekly stretching sessions or overall length of the intervention,” says Dr Ingram.

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