Does Stretching Cure Pain?

It’s a pretty common recommendation …

In pain? Stretch the muscle. Stretch the surrounding muscles. Roll them with a foam roller. Get a massage. Hit them repeatedly with that massage-gun-thing. 

The only issue here is one of basic statistics.

Tight muscles and pain are often correlative, not causative.

Pain is a difficult sensation to pin down because there can be numerous causes. 

Muscles that are sore from yesterday’s workout are painful, but so are muscles that have been legitimately strained. 

So how can we tell if a muscle is hurt-hurt or if a muscle is tight for another reason? Maybe the muscle isn’t hurt-hurt, but instead fell victim to general under-recovery, fatigue, and tension, all manifesting as pain. 

It would seem that folks often end up in pain during times of stress. And sometimes we’re actually working out less. So what gives?

Injured muscles (as in the case of a muscle strain) often become tight muscles, if only as our body’s way to try and prevent further damage to the muscle. This tightness creates pain (or at least exists alongside it).

And so if an injured muscle can create tension and pain, couldn’t an inadequately recovered muscle do the same thing? This is, after all, how conditions like tendinitis develop.

All of this to say that if you’ve been told to stretch when you’re in pain, not so fast.

I’ve met plenty of people that were in pain and many of them were super flexible.

Sometimes what you need is strength in other places to create the necessary stability for fluid movement (what we call mobility).

And sometimes you just need rest. 

Not all pain can be cured with stretching.