Stretching Might Matter More Than We Think

Stretching has always been the poor cousin of exercise.

Walk more. Lift weights. Get your heart rate up. Do cardio.

And then, if you’ve got a few minutes left, maybe stretch a little.

I’ve never looked at it that way.

Partly because stretching played such a big role in changing my own body nearly 20 years ago. Partly because Peggy and I have watched what can happen when people improve strength and mobility together.

And now there’s some interesting research suggesting flexibility work may deserve a little more attention.

A Pretty Interesting Study

Researchers followed 34,379 adults in Korea for an average of a little over nine years.

They looked at several kinds of physical activity, including aerobic exercise, muscle strengthening and what they called flexibility physical activity, things such as stretching and free gymnastics.

People who reported doing flexibility activity five or more days a week had about a 20% lower rate of death from all causes during the study than people who reported doing none.

That’s interesting.

But let’s not turn it into something it isn’t.

This was an observational study. It found an association. It did not prove that stretching five days a week will make you live 20% longer.

People who stretch regularly may also do other things differently. Researchers adjust for many of those differences, but they can’t eliminate every possibility.

Even the researchers point out that evidence specifically connecting flexibility exercise and mortality is still limited.

So I’m not ready to prescribe five stretches a day as the secret to immortality.

Damn. That would have been an easy business model. 😂

But Stretching Isn’t Nothing

What I do think is interesting is how often flexibility gets treated as an optional extra.

I don’t care much whether you can touch your toes.

I care whether you can reach something on the floor.

Turn around comfortably.

Get down on the ground.

Get back up.

Take a long enough stride to walk well.

Move your shoulders without your whole body having to negotiate the deal.

That’s where mobility starts becoming part of your life rather than some measurement on a fitness test.

Flexibility Isn’t the Whole Story Either

Here’s where I’ve changed over the years.

I used to get very excited about individual techniques.

Find the right stretch. Find the right movement. Find the thing that fixes the problem.

Nearly 20 years of working with bodies has made me considerably less interested in magic bullets.

You need mobility.

You also need strength.

Balance matters.

Your heart and lungs matter.

And increasingly, the research seems to support that broader picture too.

A large 2026 study from Harvard researchers followed more than 111,000 adults and found that people who regularly did a greater variety of physical activities had a lower risk of premature death, even after accounting for the total amount of activity they did. Those activities included walking, resistance exercise, yoga, stretching, gardening, swimming and plenty of other ways of moving.

That makes sense to me.

Your body does a lot of different things.

Why would we expect one kind of movement to take care of all of them?

Stretching Changed My Life

I can’t tell you stretching will make you live longer.

I can tell you what happened to me.

Back in 2007, I was pretty beat up. Years of sports injuries had caught up with me, and several surgeries had been recommended.

Then Peggy and I discovered resistance stretching.

We eventually trained extensively in Ki-Hara Resistance Stretching and became Master Trainers. That work became one of the foundations of what we now call RiversZen Contracted Stretching.

It changed the direction of my life.

Not because stretching was some miracle cure.

It gave me a way to start working with my body instead of simply assuming that getting older meant everything was supposed to hurt more and work less.

I’m 72 now.

I still stretch every day. I also walk, work on strength, practice Qigong, teach classes and generally keep asking my body to participate.

I’m not interested in being the most flexible 72-year-old in the room.

I want enough mobility and strength to keep doing the things I enjoy.

That’s a very different goal.

Maybe That’s the Better Question

Instead of asking:

Will stretching make me live longer?

I’d ask:

Will being able to move well make the years I have more useful?

For me, that’s an easy one.

I want to be able to get down on the floor.

I want to walk wherever Peggy and I decide to wander.

I want to teach.

I want to travel.

I want my body to keep saying yes more often than it says no.

Stretching is one of the tools I use to help make that possible.

Not the only one.

But definitely not an afterthought.

Want to Move With Us?

That’s what we work on at RiversZen.

Our classes combine strength, mobility, balance, Contracted Stretching, Qigong, yoga, Pilates and other useful ways of moving.

You don’t have to be flexible before you start. That would be rather backwards.

You can join our real RiversZen classes live online from anywhere, or use the on-demand library whenever it fits your life.

Explore RiversZen Online →
https://www.riverszen.com/online

For today: Move something that hasn’t been moving enough.

You don’t need to make a production out of it.

Just remind your body you still expect to use it.