Stretching for Pain Relief and Prevention: A Guide to a Total Body Stretch Workout

As a chiropractor, pain is something I see in my Palm Desert and West Hollywood chiropractic practices every day. There is no shortage of people in pain—low back pain, neck pain, headaches, TMJ or jaw pain, shoulder pain, knee pain, and a whole slew of other painful conditions. With chiropractic care, my clients experience incredible relief from their pain and dysfunction, and with a few extra tricks, pain can be managed to such a degree that it may just become a thing of the past.

In addition to being a chiropractor, I am also a chiropractic sports physician. Additionally, I have been a practicing yogi for the last twenty-five years. Through my training, yoga practice, and education, I have come to understand the numerous benefits of stretching for health. A regular stretching routine can not only relieve pain but also prevent it from becoming cyclical—that is, from becoming a chronic problem that recurs repeatedly.

Subluxation Pain vs. Muscle Pain

Pain can come from many sources. The two most common issues in chiropractic offices are joint-related and muscle-related issues. Joint-related issues are most often subluxations, which occur when a joint becomes stuck.  Stuck joints cause pain, inflammation, muscle spasms, and nerve irritation. There is only one effective way to correct a subluxation and, in turn, remove the excruciating pain that comes along with it, and that’s through a chiropractic adjustment. Chiropractic adjustments essentially gap the joint, opening it and allowing the synovial fluids to run back in and relubricate the joint. This returns normal motion. When normal joint motion returns, pain, inflammation, muscle spasms, and nerve irritation all decrease. Bravo—mission accomplished.

But how long does it last? Well, it depends on several factors, including flexibility, strength, nutrition, chemical exposure, mental stress, and exposure to toxins, among others. The only factor I will focus on here is flexibility, which comes, in no small part, from stretching. Stretching is the active lengthening of muscle tissue. It is pulling one end of a muscle from the other.  The most basic stretch that everyone knows is bending forward, flexing the hips, and touching the toes. This hamstring stretch pulls the part of the muscle attached to the buttocks away from the part attached to the back of the knee, allowing the muscle to lengthen over time.

When muscles get short and tight, they can cause pain. The pain of a shortened, tense muscle can be unrelenting achiness, burning, and/or feelings of stiffness or tightness. Tight, short muscles also prevent the chiropractic adjustment from holding, so joints tend to subluxate much quicker, adding to the pain and discomfort.

How Chiropractic Can Help Relieve Muscle Pain

Chiropractic is not just useful for stuck joints and the pain that accompanies them. A good chiropractic adjustment, remember, not only restores normal joint motion but also reduces muscle spasms. Think about it: If a joint is stuck, causing a significant guarding response (an involuntary protective muscular spasm), then removing the subluxation and returning normal joint motion should make muscles relax, shouldn’t it?

The fact is that as a person receives regular chiropractic care, their muscles start to relax and get more pliable. Muscle spasms diminish, and trigger points dissolve away. A good sports chiropractor will help these processes along with effective muscle therapy techniques. However, overall, regular chiropractic adjustments over a short period, as part of a prescribed treatment plan, should help reduce muscle pain and tension.

How Stretching Helps

When it comes to short, tight muscles, nothing beats stretching to provide pain relief and long-term prevention of discomfort. As I’ve described earlier, stretching is pulling one end of a muscle away from the other end, which, over time, brings actual lengthening to the muscle tissue. This frees up the joints, for sure, so it allows chiropractic adjustments to hold longer—that is, the joint won’t lock up and become subluxated again too quickly. But as muscle tissue lengthens, tension releases, and the sore, achy feeling that is a part of the tight muscle experience starts to vanish, too.

A regular stretching program brings flexibility and freedom to the body. I tell my clients that fifty percent of the patient visits I see in any given week could be prevented if people just stretched regularly. Now I realize that this is bad practice management because, after all, shouldn’t doctors want more people to come into the office in pain? The answer is no, at least not in my practice.  I try to teach people ways to empower themselves physically. I would love for them to come in needing only chiropractic maintenance and wellness care. However, as long as people continue to neglect stretching their muscles, my Los Angeles and Coachella Valley chiropractic practices will remain in business, treating those in pain—that’s just a fact of life…for now.

A Beginners Stretching Routine

So, I’d like to give you a beginner’s stretching routine to get you started.  I realize that it’s important to be practical when discussing the frequency of activity, especially with beginners. In an ideal world, you would do these stretches every day; however, I realize that might be asking a lot, so I would say doing even as little as three times a week will do wonders for your body and your life. These stretches can be performed in any order, but I personally prefer to start with my legs and buttocks and then move on to my neck, chest, shoulders, and arms.

Here is the beginners’ routine:

1. 1. Lying hip stretch
      • Muscle stretched: piriformis
      • Hold: 30 seconds on each side

1. 1. Standing hamstring stretch
      • Muscle stretched: hamstring
      • Hold: 30 seconds

1. 1. Standing hip flexor lunge
      • Muscle stretched: iliopsoas
      • Hold: 30 seconds on each side

1. 1. Chest stretch
      • Muscle stretched: pectoralis minor
      • Hold: 30 seconds on each side

1. 1. Lat Stretch
      • Muscle stretched: latissimus dorsi
      • Hold: 30 seconds on each side

1. 1. Biceps stretch
      • Muscle stretched: biceps and pectoralis major
      • Hold: 30 seconds on each side

An Advanced Stretching Routine

For more advanced stretchers—anyone who has taken yoga, played sports, or currently stretches at the gym, in dance class, or with a trainer—try the following routine.  Do the same exercises above, but add:

1. 1. Pigeon
      • Muscle stretched: piriformis
      • Hold: 60 seconds on each side

1. 1. Thigh stretch
      • Muscle stretched: rectus femoris
      • Hold: 60 seconds on each side

1. 1. Neck stretches
      • Muscle stretched: upper trapezius, levator scapulae
      • Hold: 30 seconds on each side

1. 1. Shoulder stretches
      • Muscle stretched: posterior capsule
      • Hold: 30 seconds on each side

1. 1. Forearm stretches
      • Muscle stretched: forearm flexors
      • Hold: 30 seconds on each side

Something that everyone who stretches needs to be aware of is that the duration one holds the stretch is what really matters in actually adding length to muscles. Thirty seconds is the minimum duration necessary to add muscle fibers to the end of a stretched muscle. Sixty seconds is even better, but thirty will do. As I point out in my book, The Six Keys to Optimal Health, it’s not how far you stretch a muscle that matters but how long you hold the stretch. So to gain all the benefits that come along with muscle lengthening—reduced pain, increased freedom of movement, pain prevention—you’ll need to hold that stretch, no matter how uncomfortable it is. Hold it!

There is another type of stretching that one can do, which I call “cobweb stretching.” This should be done in place of regular stretching when time is limited. Cobweb stretching is holding a stretch for a shorter time than usual—ten seconds, for example. This way, even if you are short on time, you can go through your entire routine and “get the cobwebs out.” Now, before you think there is little benefit to this type of stretching, understand that holding a stretch for even a few seconds will open up the muscles, giving you freedom of movement. Cobweb stretching is a regular part of my busy schedule, and it serves me well. I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to maintain muscle flexibility and a pain-free life.

What You Can Expect From Stretching

Adopting a new stretching regimen yields predictable results. The very first thing beginners experience is the discomfort of stretching tight, neglected muscles. For some, the discomfort feels like tightness, while for others, it may be accompanied by a burning sensation. Fret not; this is normal. When you feel burning, it is lactic acid being released by the muscle tissue. Nevertheless, you don’t want to push too far into the stretch when you feel the lactic acid burn, so go easy. If you have never felt this sensation before, don’t be afraid; the burn I am talking about is nothing more than an “Indian burn,” the kind we used to give each other as children.

The discomfort of the initial stage of stretching will pass rather quickly, and then the stretch will start to feel good. Interestingly, it is the same sensation you have been feeling all along, but the mind starts to process it differently; in other words, perception shifts. It’s truly remarkable how this happens, but I know from ten years of experience that the pain of stretching never truly goes away. On the contrary, I now crave it and stretch every moment I can.

-originally posted on October 5, 2009