Improve Flexibility with Research-Supported Stretching Protocols

**Andrew Huberman** (0:00)
Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, we are going to discuss the science and practice of flexibility and stretching. Flexibility and stretching are topics that I believe do not receive nearly as much attention as they deserve. For most people, the topics of flexibility and stretching can bring to mind things like yoga, injury prevention, or maybe even contortionism. But it turns out that flexibility and stretching are features that are built in to our basic body plan. Young children, young animals, and adults, and indeed older children and animals, all stretch and all have some degree of flexibility. It turns out that having flexibility and our ability to stretch and the interaction between stretching and flexibility are fundamental to how we move, our ability to learn new movements. Indeed, also to prevent injury will repair injuries and to offsetting and reducing inflammation throughout the body. In fact, today I'm going to share with you a remarkable set of studies that show that stretching can actually adjust things like tumor growth. This is work that was done by one of the major directors of the National Institutes of Health. So today's discussion will start with a description of the mechanisms, literally the cells and the connections from your nervous system that mediate flexibility in stretching. And I promise that I'll make that information accessible to you, whether or not you have a biology background or not. Then with that information in hand, I'm going to present to you what the scientific literature says about the best times and ways to stretch. Everything right down to the detail of how long to hold a stretch, whether or not to hold a stretch at all, because it turns out there are multiple kinds of stretching. So you can imagine you have stretches where you hold the stretch for a very long time and use as little momentum as possible. And then there's also what's called dynamic and ballistic stretching where you're literally swinging your limbs trying to increase the range of motion. I will explain the science and application of flexibility and stretching in the context of sports performance, whether or not you're engaging in cardiovascular exercise or resistance exercise or both, whether or not you're a competitive athlete or simply a recreational exerciser as I am, whether or not you are trying to increase your range of motion and flexibility for longevity purposes, or whether or not you're trying to do it in order to access different parts of your nervous system, because we'll soon learn today that your ability to improve flexibility and indeed to engage in specific stretching exercises can actually be used to powerfully modulate your ability to tolerate pain, both emotional and physical pain. So this thing that we call flexibility and stretching is actually a vast landscape. We're going to simplify and organize all that for you today. And by the end of today's episode, you're going to have a number of simple, easy to apply tools that are grounded in the best scientific research that you can apply for your specific goals. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Athletic Greens. Athletic Greens is an all-in-one vitamin mineral probiotic drink. I've been taking Athletic Greens since 2012, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast. The reason I started taking Athletic Greens and the reason I still take Athletic Greens once or twice a day is that it helps me cover all of my basic nutritional needs. It makes up for any deficiencies that I might have. In addition, it has probiotics, which are vital for microbiome health. I've done a couple of episodes now on the so-called gut microbiome and the ways in which the microbiome interacts with your immune system, with your brain to regulate mood, and essentially with every biological system relevant to health throughout your brain and body. With Athletic Greens, I get the vitamins I need, the minerals I need, and the probiotics to support my microbiome. If you'd like to try Athletic Greens, you can go to athleticgreens.com/huberman and claim a special offer. They'll give you five free travel packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. There are a ton of data now showing that vitamin D3 is essential for various aspects of our brain and body health. Even if we're getting a lot of sunshine, many of us are still deficient in vitamin D3 and K2 is also important because it regulates things like cardiovascular function, calcium in the body and so on. Again, go to athleticgreens.com/huberman to claim the special offer of the five free travel packs and the year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Today's episode is also brought to us by Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the exact ratios of electrolytes are an element and those are sodium, magnesium and potassium, but it has no sugar. I've talked many times before on this podcast about the key role of hydration and electrolytes for nerve cell function, neuron function, as well as the function of all the cells and all the tissues and organ systems of the body. If we have sodium, magnesium and potassium present in the proper ratios, all of those cells function properly and all our bodily systems can be optimized. If the electrolytes are not present and if hydration is low, we simply can't think as well as we would otherwise. Our mood is off, hormone systems go off, our ability to get into physical action, to engage in endurance and strength and all sorts of other things is diminished. So with Element, you can make sure that you're staying on top of your hydration and that you're getting the proper ratios of electrolytes. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.lmnt.com/huberman and you'll get a free element sample pack with your purchase. They're all delicious. So again, if you want to try Element, you can go to elementlmnt.com/huberman.