Illustration: Maria Chimishkyan

Test Gym

I Quit Stretching and So Can You

The case against stretching has science on its side

Elemental
Published in
6 min readSep 23, 2020

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I was a devoted stretcher for years. My high school track team began every practice with a ritualized routine of stretches, and all through my college running career, I would never begin a run without bending down to stretch my hamstrings. Until eventually I started looking into the…

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Christie Aschwanden
Elemental

Author of GOOD TO GO: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn from the Strange Science of Recovery (Norton, 2019). Twitter: @CragCrest christieaschwanden.com