Should You Stretch Before or After Your Workout for Best Mobility

Yes, you should stretch—and you’ll get the most out of your workout if you do it at the right time.

WANT TO LOOK GOOD? Lift some weights and eat healthy. Want to feel good, too? Stretch.

“That’s what makes [stretching] vital,” says Mike Boyle, co-founder of Mike Boyle Strength and Conditioning in Massachusetts, and a former strength coach for pro and Olympic teams. “If you want to feel better as well as look better, then stretching has to be part of your program.”

The main question, then, becomes when? Since your gym class days, you’ve probably had teachers, coaches, and gym bros tell you to stretch (or not to) at different times—either before your workout, or as a cooldown once your lift, run, or ride is finished.

For Boyle and Men’s Health fitness director Ebenezer Samuel, C.S.C.S., the answer is to stretch before your workout. Doing so won’t just help you feel good—it can also help with performance, reduce pain and discomfort, and provide valuable bio-feedback that can make your session smarter and stronger.

Your stretching routine doesn’t have to eat into your training time, either. You can get these benefits in just a few minutes—and get some bonus recovery boosts by tacking on some extra stretching at the end of your workout, too. Here’s how to move well and feel better with a pre-workout stretch, and how to do it in five minutes with a four-move routine from Renato Sanchez, DPT, C.S.C.S., of Bespoke Treatments in San Diego.

Forget what you learned in elementary school: A pre-workout stretch doesn’t mean reaching from your toes and holding that position. In fact, you shouldn’t reach and hold at all, Samuel says.

“You want to be warming up for your workout. You want to take your joints through a relatively large, controlled range of motion,” he says. “So you want to do dynamic stretches that get your heart rate up and move you through patterns in an active way.” At the end of these movements, like Spiderman lunges and thoracic rotations, you’ll reach ranges of motion that stretch you into and out of tougher ranges of motion as you’re moving.