 Hey everybody I'm Lance Coyke and in this video we're going to talk about why quad stretches are probably not worth your time and what I'd recommend you do instead. Would you believe we never talked about quad stretches once in my anatomy master's program? I bet a personal trainer and strength coach for about a decade now and every time I see someone stretching their quads I get a little deflated. When quad stretches are done incorrectly they are at best a waste of your time but possibly even doing more harm than good. Now don't get me wrong stretching isn't all bad and we'll talk about times when it can actually be beneficial later on in the video but my general rule is that if you're stretching your quads to solve a mobility problem there's probably a better solution to your problem. Most people stretch their quads simply because they think they're supposed to. If this is the only reason you're doing quad stretches you can probably just stop. You might be doing quad stretches because you have some tightness or pain in your knee, hip, or low back. Common sense suggests that tight things need to be stretched but tight is a vague descriptor and actually not all that helpful when it comes to solving mobility problems. Muscles can be tight for multiple reasons. For example, consider the lower cross syndrome first described by a Czechoslovakian physician named Vladimir Yanda in 1979. This position describes a forward tilt of the pelvis, short low back, and hip flexor muscles with long abdominals and hamstrings. If someone with this posture has tightness in their hip flexor it appears those hip flexors are short and need to be stretched. But then how do we explain how somebody with the same anterior pelvic tilt feels tight in their long hamstrings? To understand why both long and short muscles can feel tight we need more information. Position or body posture is an important piece of the puzzle but it's not the only piece. The most important factor in whether or not a muscle feels tight is its activation. Short hip flexors activate to stabilize the spine and advance the body forward. Long hamstrings activate to prevent the body from falling forward. Those of these muscles might feel tight then not because of their length but because they never shut off. There are a ton of ways to tighten up the quads. Poor posture puts certain muscles in a disadvantageous position. When the joints aren't balanced the brain increases muscle activity to stabilize the body. A sedentary lifestyle stiffens the body sometimes just setting a timer to remind yourself to get up and move around can do wonders to promote mobility. Sitting can tighten the quads but it's usually because of poor posture or long periods of inactivity like we just mentioned. It's worth noting that standing can do the same. Heavy lifting or repetitive motions are by definition activity. Movement is medicine as we might say but you still need variety in your movement. Different muscles, joints, directions, and weights. Poor soreness is an immune response to exercise. The slight tissue damage and swelling activates pain pathways and causes a sort of hesitancy and stiffness in the muscle. Our muscles help us breathe 14,400 times per day. If the body is out of alignment then there are about 15,000 muscle contractions promoting postural imbalances and further tightening the muscles. Of all of these, poor lifting technique is both the most common and most preventable reason for quad tightness. There are three explanations as to why someone might have poor lifting technique. The first is inexperience. New lifters need to learn how to lift with proper form. The second is poor programming. Sometimes a program demands too much from the lifter pushing her or him to a point where solid technique is not possible. This is known as volitional failure. My 10 years of experience as a strength coach suggest it's okay to push this hard one out of every four to six weeks or so. All other sessions should push to just before technique failure. The third cause of poor lifting technique is poor movement ability. If the body does not have the flexibility to perform the movement then the body will compensate in ways that place undue stress on the joints. An example would be a lifter with limited hip mobility attempting to squat past parallel. It's just not possible. If you're doing quad stretches to fix your knee pain first, make sure your doctor is okay with your experimentation. There could be something more serious going on. And remember, this video is only meant to help you improve your movement and is not intended to treat your medical issues. I wrote a long section in the article accompanying this video about different types of knee pain. If you're interested, I'll link that up here. I might make a video in the future about knee pain, patellar tracking, and knee alignment because I think it's an important topic. So be sure to subscribe and comment below if you're interested in seeing something like that. All right. Enough theory. Let's see if these quad stretches are indeed a waste of your time. I've put together four tests that will not only help you decide whether or not you should do quad stretches but also give you some better alternative drills to maximize your posture, mobility, and overall body health. Our first test is simply a questionnaire. Skip the quad stretches if you're trying to reduce your anterior pelvic tilt. You don't normally feel better after stretching. You've developed new problems since starting stretching such as sciatica, quad pulls, or a tingling sensation in your leg. You're stretching to prepare for a strength workout and these stretches are not addressing a specific mobility limitation. And you may see some benefit from quad stretches if you're sore from a tough workout. You haven't been moving around much. You've been doing a lot of repetitive movements such as housework or yard work. Our second test will look at how efficiently you breathe. There are a multitude of ways to move air into the lungs, but your diaphragm in the middle of your body is made for breathing. Overbreathing with accessory muscles of inspiration like the traps or the perispinals leads to decreased mobility throughout the entire body. To perform this test, stand with one hand on the belly and one hand on the chest. Take a slightly exaggerated breath in and examine when each hand moves. To pass the test, both hands must expand at the same time and rate. If they don't, this is a sign that your diaphragm and pelvic floor are not working together. This promotes over-breathing or mild hyperventilation which stiffens muscles, restricts mobility, and impairs good posture. To fix a poor breathing pattern, we're going to use an exercise from the butaiko clinic called the control pause. Sit comfortably in a chair with relaxed shoulders and feet flat on the floor. Take a few quiet breaths through your nose with lips sealed then on the last one, plug your nose at the end of your resting exhale. Time yourself until you feel the urge to breathe again. This next breath in should be quiet. If you're gasping, you waited too long to stop the timer. Our goal on this exercise is to build up to a 40-second pause after exhaling. This teaches your body to tolerate carbon dioxide and is the first step to prevent over-breathing. During each test, practice moving the belly and chest simultaneously. Repeat the test at least 5 times per day, also adding and daily walking your light cardio with only nasal breathing. If you have to breathe through your mouth, the cardio is not easy enough. Our third test is the body weight squat to examine your lower body mobility. It's best to perform a few reps, filming yourself first from the side and then from the front. Stand with feet shoulder-width apart and toes turned out 5 degrees. Squat down as low as you can and return to standing. From the side, we're looking to see you squat all the way down until your thighs touch your calves. If you cannot get there, your back arches or your heels rise off the ground, then your squat mobility is limited. On the front, we're looking to see if your knees splay apart or your feet turn out. These subtle movements also tell us your squat mobility is limited. If you're unable to do a full squat without compensation, then you need to learn how to control your hips. Properly positioned pelvic bones allow your joints to stay loose because your stabilizing muscles don't lock down your body. The first step to controlling your pelvis is learning how to do a posterior pelvic tilt. Lie on your back with your hips and knees bent to 90 degrees and your feet on a bench or chair. Exhale and reach both knees up about 1 inch towards the ceiling. Check to make sure your low back is in the ground but your tailbone is risen off the ground. Also check to make sure your abdominal muscles are off. You should feel your hamstrings holding yourself up in this position. If you feel your quads or calves, attempt to relax them, re-tuck your hips and shift the tension to the hamstrings. Hold this position for 8 slow nasal breaths, rest about 30 seconds and repeat 4 more times. Once finished, re-test your squat aiming to avoid the technique faults we outlined a minute ago. In the future, if your squat feels limited, you can perform the supine 90 90 posterior pelvic tilt to re-position your hips, increasing your mobility and activating your glutes and hamstrings. Our fourth and final test is the supine march which examines similar patterns to the squat but shows us if there is asymmetry between sides. To perform the supine march, lie on your back with legs straight, arms by your side, and a 2-4 inch bolster underneath your knees. Keeping one leg straight with a back of the knee pressed into the bolster, bend the other knee up toward your head as far as possible. Once stabilized, grab the leg and pull it toward your chest to see how much further it can go. This works best if you film yourself from the side. Note there are two parts to this test. Active bending of the leg on its own and passive bending by pulling it up with the hands. Look for differences between sides in both active and passive bending. If one side doesn't bend as far as the other, or if you have pain during the test, then you have asymmetrical hip mobility. To fix this, we're going to modify a hip mobility test known as the Thomas test to turn it into an exercise. Lie on your back with a 6 inch bolster underneath your knees. A foam roller works well here. Bring one knee up to 90 degrees at the hip and knee. Tuck the hips like our posterior pelvic tilt from earlier, pushing the low back into the ground. Next, push the down knee into the bolster. Hold this position for 5 nasal breaths. When inhaling, straighten the up knee and when exhaling, allow that knee to bend back to the starting position. Repeat this for 3 sets on each side. Ok, let's do a quick recap of all 4 of our tests. Our first test was a series of questions. You probably don't want to stretch if you're stretching to reduce your anterior pelvic tilt, you don't feel better after stretching, you've developed new problems since starting stretching, or you're stretching to prepare for a strength workout. On the other hand, if you're stretching because you're sore, you haven't moved much, or you've been doing a lot of repetitive movements, then stretching is not a bad use of your time. Our second test was diaphragmatic breathing. If your chest and belly don't expand at the same time and rate when breathing in, then you should practice the control, pause, exercise, and nasal breathing during walking and light cardio. Our third test was the squat. If you cannot squat all the way down without your heels rising, your back arching, your knees spaying out, or your feet rotating out, then you should practice the supine 90-90 posterior pelvic tilt for 5 sets of 8 breaths. Our fourth and final test was the supine march. If you notice side-to-side discrepancies in mobility, you should do the active Thomas test quad inhibition exercise for 3 sets of 5 breaths on each leg. Alright, so hopefully you feel more confident about whether or not quad stretches are right for you. It's a surprisingly complicated topic, but now that you understand some of the nitty-gritty details, you can make better decisions for yourself and maybe, hopefully, even some of your friends as well. If you're curious, yes, I do coach some quad stretches occasionally. If you want to see the right way to do that, check out this old video up here where we go over using your glutes, abs, and hamstrings to make your stretches more effective and less harmful. Thanks for sticking with me through this whole video. If you learned something, hit the like button and subscribe to see when I release more videos. If you want to dive deeper into quad stretches, you should definitely check out my full article on the topic and maybe also check out the case study that I did with my buddy Jess. He was looking for some stretching as well and we ended up giving him some mobility drills instead that made his Olympic lifting look a lot smoother.