Importance of stretching and mobility for injury prevention

Throughout my bodybuilding career, both as an amateur and professional, and even beyond that till this day, I always practised improving my flexibility and mobility by performing some form of stretching.

It’s something that doesn’t get enough attention in my opinion and is one of the key aspects in improving not just your performance, but your day-to-day lives and even helping to minimise the risk of injuries.

To give you the backstory with the main reason as to why I started to incorporate a stretching routine into my regime, it started way back when I was actually just a year or so into my bodybuilding journey. A few of the lads from Martin’s Gym (which would become Temple Gym after I took over it) went to a seminar where the guest was none other than ‘The Quadfather’ himself, Tom Platz. I wanted to go too of course, but I had work commitments that I couldn't get out of so didn't get to witness first-hand what was to come.

So as Tom was onstage posing and showing to the crowd his phenomenal physique, one of the guys shouted up to him; “You’ve got muscle but you can’t move!”

How did ‘The Golden Eagle’ respond? He dropped right down into the splits and that shut them up!

From then I researched stretching and how it’s beneficial for bodybuilding and injury prevention. I was very impressed with Tom's ability to perform numerous stretches and the flexibility that he acquired, especially with the size of his quads!

So as I said, I researched and read articles from Tom and how he stretched so that I could apply certain techniques to my own regime.

Back in the 80s and 90s for the majority of my career, I did focus predominantly on lower body and lower back stretches.

How I approached stretching for bodybuilding.

Back in my competitive bodybuilding days, I usually performed the bulk of stretches before my leg workouts. These stretches included hurdler stretches, hamstring stretches, hip flexor stretches and others. But what I also did was a series of dynamic stretches to further warm up my legs and lower back in particular.

This warm up typically lasted for approximately 10-15 minutes. Bear in mind I was 300lbs and still performing these stretches!

How I improved my stretching and flexibility over the years.

I always wanted to keep my body flexible throughout my life and over the past few years, I’ve taken up new forms of exercise… some that I would never have dreamt of attempting some 30 years ago!

In particular now, I do yoga and pilates to help keep my body flexible and they still provide me with a challenge each time… both physically and mentally.

I had already built up a fairly good foundation, especially my hamstrings with my stretching from over the years but yoga and pilates were a completely new dimension that I’d never ventured to before. My balance and spinal mobility was weak to perform these new exercises with, so it took a while to build it up and it’s something I’ve worked on as a focus over the years.

My body back in my bodybuilding days was a statue, it was kind of a product that was for contests and my physique, I purposely built in that way for a reason.

But not anymore, my body is like a house now and my goals are to maintain my good cardio for health and fitness as well as improving my flexibility.

I really enjoy hiking up the mountains of Spain and riding my bike across the beachfront with the incredible seaview. I want to be able to do these activities in another 10 years and my goals now are longevity based and how I can optimise my mind and body.

Does stretching prevent injury?

In my opinion, yes, stretching can help prevent gym-related injuries. 

The main reasons being that stretching helps increase blood flow around the body, and by improving the flexibility of a muscle and well, your body as a whole, it can help reduce stiffness and injuries since your body is more of a mobile unit.

I do believe that if you are mobile, flexible and have strong joints, you can decrease your risk of injury.

Another thing to add here is the importance of finding a good balance. What I mean by this is I believe having great flexibility and mobility with no strength is not really good since the joint strength will not be strong which in turn could probably cause injuries, so I recommend training with weights to help strengthen the joints, tendons and ligaments.

Of course vice versa too, if you just focus on training with weights and have no flexibility or much mobility, then your risk of injury could increase too.

So find a good balance.

Putting this into practice and what it means for performance

I recommend spending 10-15 minutes per day working on your flexibility and stretching. These exercises can be done in the comfort of your own home too and will go a long way in helping you produce a more well-rounded body that is functional too.

And what this means for your athletic performance is that by stretching and improving your mobility: your range of motion will improve, your muscle flexibility will increase and of course, your risk of injury can decrease.

One exercise that I’ve found to work wonders for my rotator cuff and overall posture is just simply hanging from a bar. This is known as the ‘dead hang’ and it can help to increase shoulder mobility, strengthen the lats, grip strength, decompression of the spine and posture correction.

Try to perform 2-3 sets of 1 minute hangs before your workouts.

Especially if you work a desk job or sit for long periods of time, I highly recommend stretching and working on your posture today, to help prevent issues down the line and potential injuries.

You can find many exercises to perform on YouTube and also on our Instagram where I demonstrate some warm-up exercises you can perform before your workouts.