Andrew Huberman

And how many sets should you do that?

And how many times a week should you do that?

To answer those questions, I'm going to turn to what I think is a really spectacular review.

The title of the paper is the relation between stretching typology and stretching duration, the effects on range of motion.

First of all, and I quote, all stretching typologies showed range of motion improvements over a long-term period.

However, the static protocols showed significant gains with a p-value less than 0.05, which means a probability that cannot be explained by chance alone.

when compared to ballistic or PNF protocols.

So again, what we're hearing is that static stretching is the preferred mode for increasing limb range of motion.

Although here they make the additional point that static stretching might even be superior, not just to ballistic stretching, but also to PNF protocols.

The authors go on to say, time spent stretching per week seems fundamental to elicit range of movement improvements when stretches are applied for at least or more than five minutes per week.

Okay, this is critical.

This is not five minutes per stretch, remember?

30 seconds per static stretch, but at least five minutes per week.

So what this means is that we should probably be doing anywhere from two to four sets

of 30 second static hold stretches, five days per week.

So what would effective stretching protocol look like?

We're all trying to improve limb range of motion for different limbs and different muscle groups.

Let's talk about hamstrings for the time being.

This could of course be applied to other muscle groups.

Let's say you want to improve hamstring flexibility and limb range of motion about and around the hamstring and involving the hamstring.