The Current - Stretching vs. Mobility: What your body really needs

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

To stretch or not to stretch and does it even matter. The debate over the importance of stretching is age old - now it seems like everyone is talking about mobility. What's the difference and is one better than the other? David Behm, professor at Memorial University, specializing in human kinetics and sport science breaks it down.

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Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. Apologies in advance. Maybe this is too personal. Can you touch your toes? What about doing the splits? Is that something you're able to do? Could you do it before? Maybe you can't do it now?

For decades, static stretches like these have been touted as critical parts of health and wellness. But a new bombshell has entered the fitness. world, and I'm sorry in advance to all you Toronto Blue Jays fans, we are about to talk about Los Angeles Dodgers star pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto. The man who helped crush Canada's baseball dreams is going viral for his approach to training. He's got ridiculous mobility. Dude looks like he's made of rubber. So instead of using brute force and lifting big weights, like a lot of pitchers do in MLB today, you know, mass equals gas. He uses his incredible mobility to almost turn himself into a human slingshot. You can see Yamamoto twisting and contorting

his body and fluid repetitive movements and he's not alone. Mobility is the hot fitness trend these days. But how is that any different than stretching? To set us straight, see what I did there? I'm joined by David Bame. He is a professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland, specializing in human kinetics, exercise, science and sport science. David, good morning. Good morning. How are you doing? I'm well. as our man, Yamamoto, onto something here, not just stretching, just moving, really. Oh, absolutely. You know, people get confused about stretching versus mobility

versus resistance training. And stretching is part of mobility. But a lot of people focus in just on one aspect. And the secret is, as Yamamoto is doing, is he incorporates a lot of different things. So his mobility exercises incorporate static stretching. Sorry, excuse me. But then he's also got the movement.

He works on his balance. There's strength involved in what he's doing to move from one movement to another. So he's got the complete book, and he's doing it very well. What is the difference between mobility work and stretching? Well, like I said, mobility would be more of an umbrella term. So within mobility, and you've got to think of, you know, there's static stretching, there's dynamic stretching. So if I'm going to do a mobility program or a warm-up, then I'm going to start doing some dynamic activities.

So let's say like I'm Yamamoto. So I'm going to do some dynamic stretching of my legs and my arms. And then maybe I'm going to hold a position for a little while. And that would be some static stretching. Then I'd move from that position to another position where I'm going to hold that position for a while. So because I'm moving, I'm active, my muscles are contracting. They're getting warm. and that's just by getting warm.

In fact, you could just sit in a sauna and you can get an increased range of motion. Now, that's not going to last for a long period of time, but still, you need to get your muscles warm. So the mobility that Yamamoto is doing is warming up the muscles. He's putting stress on the muscles, which is again important, and then he's moving to get the balance and the strength. So you get this what's called potentiation effect.

So you get stronger and more powerful from doing that. I'm interested in this in part because I have never been older and I find that I need to stretch more before I do certain workouts if I'm going to go for a run or I'm going to lift weights. What do we know but the benefits of stretching as we age? Well, we know obviously that it diminishes. We get stiffer. You know, all our tissues get stiffer.

The reason that I have wrinkles on my face is that I don't have the same, you know, conglomeration of proteins that I did when I was younger. So the same thing happens if I got wrinkles on my face, then I've got changes to my tendons, my ligaments, and my muscles. But the good thing is, is that if you're active and you continue stretching or you continue doing mobility exercises throughout your life, then you can delay those changes. And so, you know, you can still touch your toes at the age of 80 or 90

if you're still doing your activities. You're probably not going to be as flexible as you were when you're 20 or 30. But again, we can probably. prolong our flexibility and our range of motion. And yet we all know those people who exercise regularly, and they boast about how they never stretch. I don't need to stretch. I can just go out and do this.

What's the deal with that? Well, you know, with everything we have, there's genetics and there's the environment. And so, you know, you could have somebody who could be the best basketball player in the world, but if they don't work at it, they're not going to be the best basketball player in the world. So, you know, take Michael Jordan,

he had the fantastic genetics, and then he worked at it. So he became, some say, the goat. of basketball. And then the same thing with stretching. So some people, you know, have more compliant, more less stiff tissues than others. And some people have very stiff tissues. So if you're born with very stiff ligaments and tendons, it's going to be harder for you to get a great range of motion. Maybe you're never going to go to the Olympics and be a gymnast, you know, and win a gold medal at the Olympics. But you can still improve your range of motion. So you've got to work

within what you've got. And, you know, if you're a big person, maybe you could, you know, play professional football, but you're not going to play professional football if you weigh 125 pounds. And you're not going to be an Olympic gymnast if you're very stiff. But you can do stretching to improve your health.

Everybody can improve their health by doing mobility exercises and stretching exercises. That speaks to, I mean, there's a lot of focus on the difference between lifespan and health span these days. What do we know about how a range of most can impact your longevity and overall health? Yeah, well, the first thing is that you don't need to go to extremes. So you don't need to be able to do splits in order to live, you know, a healthy life until

your 90 or 100. You just need a range of motion that allows you to do your activities of daily living, you know, reach down and tie your shoes or pick up a book off off the floor. That will allow you to live longer. Just like with resistance training, you don't need to bench press 300 pounds or squat 500 pounds to live a long time. You just need to keep your strength up. So that's what we need to do is we need to be like I guess the secret with everything is moderation. You know, if you need, if you are a gymnast, maybe you need to do the splits.

But 99% of the population does not need to do the splits. And if you have a reasonable range of motion, then you have a better quality. your life. If you're doing certain types of exercise, whether you're doing cardio or you're doing weight training or what have you, you can measure your progress. You can feel and see yourself getting stronger. How do you measure your range of motion? Well, this is quite easy, especially, you know, for example, for your hamstrings, the back of your legs and your lower back, you just sit on the floor and see if you can touch your toes. And then you could measure, for instance, when you first start, maybe you're only two or three inches or two or three centimeters from your toes.

And after doing your mobility training or your stretch training for the next month or two months, you'll hit your toes or go past your toes. So that's quite easy. If you want to measure your shoulders, then you could put your arm against the wall and then turn your body. And how far can you turn your body? Well, perhaps you're 90 degrees to the wall when you first start off, and then you can increase that range of motion.

So, you know, normally you're looking at the distance that you can reach to see about your flexibility. So if people just finally, if people want to improve their range of motion, give us a couple of easy steps, things that somebody could do at home. They don't need to get, you know, fancy gym equipment or what have you. But things that they could do at home to improve their range of motion. Sure. Well, the great thing is you don't need equipment. So you could go out and you could buy foam rollers and you do something like that.

But at home, all you have to do, first of all you have to do, first of all, you do, don't have to go to pain. Everybody's, oh, I got to go, you know, feel pain. You don't have to feel pain to get an increased range of motion. You just have to go and feel some tension on your muscles to accomplish that. You also don't need to, you know, stretch a muscle for 10 minutes or an hour. We've done research where five seconds of stretching improved range of motion for a very short period of time, of course. Now, you're going to get a better deal if you do it for a minute or two minutes, but basically, you know, 60 seconds, two minutes of stretching, hold it just until you feel your initial tension on the muscle. Do that for your main muscle groups. So like I said,

you know, try and touch your toes, do your shoulders, your lower back. You know, you can have this done in five minutes if you do that per day, and you'll see an increase in range of motion. This is great. David, thank you very much for this. My pleasure. Be flexible. David Vabe is a professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland, specializing in human kinetics, exercise science, and sports science. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca slash podcasts.