By Kevin Kolodziejski
Please don’t play psychologist and diagnose me with kick-the-dog syndrome. I don’t even own a dog. Honestly, my habit of splitting hairs while writing this column is not a case of displaced aggression simply because so few of them remain atop my head — or so many of them now grow in my ears and nose.
While I’m being so straightforward, let me explain exactly why I don’t want you to feel that way about me (or ever kick a canine). It would mean that the declaration I made to kick off this column three years and three months ago that we both ultimately ride to feel deeply and completely — “three weeks’ worth of emotions in a three-hour ride” — was wrong. That, when it comes to riding a bike, you and I not alike.
Which in turn would mean you’re not a “cycologist,” the term I use to describe the mindset that naturally develops when you truly embrace the cycling lifestyle. When as a result of ruminating while you ride (as well as the inevitable continuation of it afterwards), you’re better able to recognize the world’s interrelatedness. Like linking your super-good, after-supper mood to something you did after breakfast. Turned yourself inside out and somehow stayed with the leaders on that series of sprinter’s hills at the end of a really fast group ride.
But recognizing all the world’s interrelatedness can lead to a monstrous, jumbled mental mess.
Unless you do what this card-carrying cycologist so often does: split hairs. And man, do I ever split them when it comes to stretching. That’s because the published research about it is also a monstrous, jumbled mess.
The Need to Split Hairs When Stretching
A comprehensive review first published in December 2015 by Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism uncovered 119 studies where stretching actually made athletic performance significantly worse, 145 studies where its effect was deemed to be uncertain, and 6 where athletic performance significantly improved as a result of it. With such a mixed bag, I’d be a total dum-dum — or the sleaziest used-car salesman — to try to sell you on stretching just before you ride.
Especially since I don’t.
After a long weekend ride, however, is an entirely different matter. But the stretching I do then may not strike you as stretching at all. It’s not the static, stretch-and-hold variety associated with gym classes from long ago. It’s dynamic stretching, more akin to yoga, tai chi, and pilates than anything ever done in tighty-whitey gym shorts and one-gender-only gym classes long ago.
To do so, I use a RumbleRoller, a knobby and harder-than-normal foam roller. Two, 20- to 25-minute sessions each weekend work wonders for me . . . but the cycologist in me acknowledges that much of that benefit may be due to my age being eight years closer to 102 than 32. (How’s that for troubling trivia?) So I’m not going to play shady used car salesman working solely on commission and sell you on foam rolling either.
‘Mother’s Little Helper’
I mention my age because the now-wrinkled Mick Jagger of the now-wrinkled Rolling Stones displayed impressive prescience in declaring, “What a drag it is to be old,” in “Mother’s Little Helper” nearly 60 years ago. While I don’t have the pedaling power I had five, let alone 10 years ago, though, I refuse to resort to the sort of help the song suggests. Instead, I squat once a week using dumbbells or a weighted vest along with less-than-conventional stances and as intensely as I can.
I couldn’t imagine attempting any leg work now, however — or doing any lifting for my upper body, for that matter — without stretching beforehand. But that’s not solely because of my age. Stretching before lifting has become the final part of my mental preparation. The time when I review my goals for that session and beyond. The time when any doubts about torturing myself that day give way to a sense of “you can do this.”
No Doubts: Stretching Lengthens Your Lifespan
While you may not have such doubts and therefore feel no need for such mental preparation, I have no doubt you’d like to stretch out your lifespan. Which is why you’re about to read about a study published online by BMC Public Health in June of 2023.
In it, researchers analyzed exercise information accrued through the Korean National Health and Nutrition Survey 2007-2013 and provided by more than 34,000 Korean adults (57 percent female, 43 percent male, and on average 48 years old). Using questionnaires, the participants catalogued all exercise (occupational and recreational) they had done for the past week. Based on that, the researchers created three groups, in essence separating the hardcore exercisers from the moderate ones and the moderate ones from those who barely or didn’t exercise at all. Groups were made not only based on the overall amount of exercise but also specific exercise types.
While you won’t be shocked to learn the hardcore and moderate aerobic exercisers had a lower risk of any type of death during the average follow-up time of 9.2 years, a true shocker emerged. Stretching was “statistically significantly associated with a lower risk of all-cause mortality.” In fact, compared to those who didn’t stretch in some way, shape, or form, those who did at least one day a week had a 20 percent lower risk of dying during the follow-up period.
Yet there was a bigger shocker, still.
The 20 percent lower risk of dying associated with just one day a week of stretching was actually a bit higher than the benefit received by either hardcore aerobic exercisers or strength trainers. This double jolt isn’t unprecedented, though. It’s just that the December 2020 study published by Medicine and Science in Sports Exercise that found something similar was originally seen as outlier.
A Prior Study Also Links Stretching to Longer Life
In that study, nearly 27,000 American adults reported exercise frequency, degree, and type and then the researchers made sense of it. Well, at least most of it.
What made sense was after factoring out all the outside elements that could affect their findings — such as total volume of exercise, demographic factors, and socioeconomic status — the researchers determined all exercise led to a lower risk of early death. What didn’t was that stretching was one of the two activities (volleyball was the other) “uniquely associated with lower risks of mortality.”
Why that is indeed the case may not make sense to you, either. Even so it makes a strong case for stretching — at the right times, that is — to be part of your cycling, overall exercise, and wellness plans.
Kevin Kolodziejski began his writing career in earnest in 1989. Since then he’s written a weekly health and fitness column and his articles have appeared in magazines such as “MuscleMag,” “Ironman,” “Vegetarian Times,” and “Bicycle Guide.” He has Bachelor and Masters degrees in English from DeSales and Kutztown Universities.
A competitive cyclist for more than 30 years, Kevin won two Pennsylvania State Time Trial championships in his 30’s, the aptly named Pain Mountain Time Trial 4 out of 5 times in his 40s, two more state TT’s in his 50’s, and the season-long Pennsylvania 40+ BAR championship at 43.
Dr. Matt Wachsman, MD PhD says
I also ballroom dance. I am severely limtied by being stoop shouldered. This is because I am hunched over a computer 2 hrs a day. I was thinking of other ways to counter this with stretching during my bike ride commute when I realized “Hey, I might hunch over the bike, but my head is tilted up 45 degrees nearly 2 hrs a day while I ride”.
You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to realize that every activity you do makes it’s physical impression. BTW, you can’t Sherlock what type of l;aborer someone is anymore because in post-union times, laborers all are called upon to do everything. Road rash on my back does signal I’m an active cyclist.
Froze says
The reason why us older people men have male pattern baldness and get an overabundance of hair in our ears and noses is because the hair on the top of our heads is slowly being sucked through the skull, through the brains, and comes out where it can the quickest, and that’s our ears and noses…
Matt K says
I will split hairs and say this piece confuses causality with correlation. It matters.
Roy Bloomfield says
“What a drag it is to be old” . . . Actually, the correct lyric is “What a drag it is GETTING old”
Roy Bloomfield says
What a drag it is “GETTING old,” not “to be old” . . .