You’re getting out of the car after a long drive, or up from your computer after a stressful workday, and there it is—that tight, achy feeling in your neck. Your first instinct is to pull your head toward your shoulder, trying to lengthen your stiff, sore muscles.
We’ve all been told stretching is a great way to keep your body loose and limber and ward off any potential achy tightness. But does doing it when you’re already hurting actually help you—or are there better ways to soothe the soreness instead? We tapped physical therapists, sports medicine doctors, and strength coaches to break it all down.
The answer depends, in part, on why your muscles hurt in the first place.
To know whether stretching sore muscles could benefit you, it helps to understand what’s behind that ache, board-certified sports physical therapist Leada Malek, DPT, CSCS, author of the book Science of Stretch, tells SELF. There are three things to keep in mind:
- Your muscles might be weak.
- Your range of motion might be restricted due to chronic tightness.
- Your muscles may have been (micro)damaged due to a tough workout.
Let’s take the first one. Simply holding your body in a fixed position—say, screen time or a long drive—can fatigue your muscles, making them feel stiff or sore, since they’re working hard to hold that position. The less strength and endurance your muscles have, the more prone you are to this kind of pain, she says.
Secondly, you might also feel pain in your neck (or other areas) because your muscles have shortened or tightened over time, decreasing your range of motion, or how far you can move your muscles or joints in the directions they’re supposed to go. For instance, the more time you spend hunched over screens, the less flexibility you might have in the muscles around your neck and shoulders.
Finally, if you’ve just completed a tough workout, you might be dealing with delayed onset muscle soreness, or DOMS. When you exercise for the first time in a while or change up your routine, you can cause minor damage or microtrauma to your muscle fibers, Susie Reiner, PhD, CSCS, certified exercise physiologist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Kentucky’s Sports Medicine Research Institute, tells SELF. In healthy muscle, small threadlike components called actin and myosin neatly line up next to each other. With DOMs, “all of the actin and myosin are jumbled together,” Dr. Reiner says. This triggers an inflammatory response, which further increases pain and stiffness.
Stretching, when appropriate, can help in a few different ways.
When you’re performing a static stretch—say, you’re holding a position for a set amount of time—you’re pulling those actin and myosin threads apart, lengthening your muscles, Dr. Reiner says. When you’re dealing with minor stiffness and pain, stretching sore muscles can increase your mobility and range of motion in the moment, allowing you to move more freely. Done regularly, it can preserve that range of motion and keep your muscles more flexible and prepared to handle the challenges of your day.