Weplay Moms

To be flexible literally means to be capable of bending easily without breaking. But often times stretching is not considered a core section of an athlete’s practice or workout.

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While children are assumed to be naturally flexible, in all seriousness, they are just as susceptible to injury if their muscles and tendons are not as long and flexible as needed to succeed in their sport.

In very simplistic terms, think of your youth athlete’s muscles and tendons as elastic structures similar to rubber bands. A stretchy rubber band is generally capable of greater motion and power than a cold, stiff rubber band. Long flexible muscles and tendons lead to better strength, power, speed, agility, and even lower injury rates.

But there is considerable debate about what the “best” and safest method is to improve flexibility for young athletes. Back in the ‘60s and ‘70s we started every practice session with a series of stretch-and-hold moves (called “static stretches”), and then went on to activities involving movement.

But over the past several years the pendulum has moved the other way. It’s now known that “flexibility” is much better and safer through exercises done with movement, called “dynamic stretching”. We also know that it’s harmful to stretch a cold muscle.

There are many different theories about the “best” way to improve flexibility but here are some general guidelines for dynamic stretching that can be useful in most sports and age groups:

Tip 1. Have your youth athlete start with a 3-5 minute easy jog. The purpose of this part of the activity is to get the body warmed up and to reduce risk of injury. As I said above, don’t move to stretches without doing a warm-up first. Depending on the sport and your environment your youth athlete could also do a line-to-line jog, a lateral shuttle run, and backward running.

Tip 2. Move next into dynamic stretching. There are many, many different types of dynamic stretches. Coaches of different sports will have their favorites for their sport, so what is outlined here is a very general guideline:

Tip 3.
a. Straight leg marching- for hamstrings and glutes
b. Butt-kicks- for quadriceps
c. Forward shuffle with hip rotation- for groin/adductors
d. Scorpion cross-over stretch lying on your back- for lower back and hip abductors
e. Handwalks- for shoulders, core abdominals

If you’d like to see some photos of a simple version of dynamic stretching for adults take a look at the Core Performance website. The folks at Core Performance refer to this phase as Movement Preparation and you can get a good idea of the types of movements we’re talking about above. (I have no relationship with Core Performance, I just really like what they do.) And if you’re a soccer player I highly recommend the Santa Monica Sports Medicine PEP program.

And finally, old-fashioned static (stretch and hold position) stretches can be done as part of the cool-down after activity.

Static stretches haven’t disappeared completely, they just come at the end of the training session rather than right at the beginning. There are literally hundreds of ways to do static stretching, and many sport-specific stretches. Here’s a bare minimum of stretches that target most of the muscle groups. For each of these you want the kids to hold for about 30 seconds and do 2 or 3 repetitions of each stretch.

Tip 4. Upper body stretches
a. Across body shoulder stretch b. Triceps back-scratcher stretch

Tip 5. Lower back stretch
a. Rocking on all fours

Tip 6. Lower body stretches
a. Calf/Achilles stretch b. Quadriceps stretch- standing c. Figure four hamstring stretch d. Inner thigh/adductor stretch e. Hip flexor stretch

Flexibility tends to be neglected during sports performance training, but I strongly encourage you to make it a key component of the overall sport fitness program for your young athletes. The short amount of time spent on this will have a big benefit in improved performance and lower injury rates.