Press Releases
Stretching Can Ease the “Stark Realities” of Poor Posture
By Jo Napier, Fitness ColumnGLOBE AND MAIL
Our bodies break down because of how we move, Dr. Stark believes. “The Stark Reality of Stretching” promotes stretching to counter lower-body muscle imbalance and damage.
When you wear high heels, your leg muscles shorten to that positional usage. You develop muscle imbalances in your calf muscles, hamstrings, and hip flexors. Must women toss their Italian sling backs? “Wear them” Dr. Stark said. “Just make sure you do your calf stretches and your hamstring stretches every day!”
Dr. Stark said studies of disabilities and joint damage among mail carriers, police officers and nurses will likely bring changes. Stretching may be included in workplace guidelines within the next 20 years, he said. “By then, we’ll know even more about the cost of trying to repair people”.
Stretching Common Sense…The Gospel of Stretching
By Barry Link, News ReporterISLAND LIFE
We all know we should do it. But chances are we’re doing it wrong and hurting ourselves in the process. Most of us ought to stretch, no matter how active (or inactive) we are. Go to any sporting event, or watch ordinary people prepare for a daily run, and you will see them stretching.
It’s a serious situation, says Dr. Stark. Through bad stretching techniques, we are hampering the performance of young athletes and making them more prone to injury. Older people are also succumbing to injuries and “age related” impairments that a basic stretching program would prevent.
What’s wrong? Dr. Stark argues we have not paid attention to the way the world has changed. We live longer and in a world that used to have soft grass, earth and sand, but is now largely paved over with hard surfaces.
Our other problem is a general ignorance of the way muscles function. Popular knowledge of muscle-related anatomy and function is non-existent.
The book’s early chapters are not necessarily easy reading for the layperson. But while it is a reflection of how the technically educated Stark talks, it’s also what he want us to know. The simple stretches in the book are also well diagrammed and show the reader exactly what the body is doing during stretches. “We’ve got to stop reinventing Mother Nature”, says Dr. Stark. “That’s what we keep trying to do”.
Author Exposes Stretching Perils
by Susan Scott, Living ReporterCALGARY HERALD
This book takes the reader through chapters on anatomical structures, how muscles function, how they stretch, their properties, and Stark’s methods of stretching. The book is carefully structured so that each chapter lays the basis for understanding the next. It is therefore not such a surprise to the reader that in the stretching chapters several very common movements have big X’s slashed through them. Most books on the market do not address the science of stretching, says Dr. Stark. They merely promote outworn theories. “We all need to become more current” he says. Julie Moylan, director of Bankers Hall and Bow Valley physiotherapy clinics, agrees. The good news is that the book does detail how to isolate muscles and stretch them. For many people, these would be radical departures from their normal routines.
Stark Realities of Stretching
By Sherri Kwasnicki, Fitness ReporterVancouver, “The Province” Newspaper
Most people don’t think about the stretching exercises they perform before or after a workout but they should. A controversial new book on stretching suggests that some traditional methods of stretching may be doing more harm than good. Titled “The Stark Reality of Stretching”, it is written by Dr. Steven D. Stark, who’s been involved in sports all his life. Dr. Stark’s credentials are impeccable. He is the first podiatrist appointed to the Sports Medicine Council of BC. In an interview about the book, Dr. Stark said one reason he wrote it is because he’d grown “frustrated”. “I see so many patients who’ve been told by their physiotherapist, doctor or personal trainer to do the wrong things. Often the exercises they’ve been prescribed are what’s causing or exacerbating the problem”.
For years now, stretching has been touted as an integral part of any successful fitness program. Its role in promoting health, good posture and injury prevention is undisputed. It enhances athletic performance and promotes lifelong flexibility, which is vital, as we age, for keeping us mobile and free of injury.
One of the most useful aspects of the book is the way it describes the many common mistakes both young athletes and professionals make while stretching. Dr. Stark has made it easy enough for the average reader to understand.
Proper Stretching is Key to Athletic Performance
By Michael Booth, Sports Medicine Reporter“Now” Sports
When avid hockey fans arrive at the rink early to watch the teams warm up, most do so to admire the players skills. Dr. Steven Stark, on the other hand, finds the pre-game exercises more horrifying than entertaining. “It’s horrendous – my reaction is: Why are they so surprised when they get so many groin tears? Hockey players who in an attempt to prevent groin tears, attempt stretching exercises on the ice, are often doing more harm than good. “We have great coaches and we spend a great amount of time working on an athletes skill level” Dr. Stark says. “But we only give lip service to the preparations and the warm-up before those skills are addressed. As a result, we’re seeing more and more injuries. To help combat the growing tide of injured muscles Stark has written a useful book on the topic. “The Stark Reality of Stretching”. According to Dr. Steven D. Stark, a properly stretched and elongated muscle actually stores energy, which helps an athlete perform to the best of his/her ability. Without stretching, the athlete becomes susceptible to tearing and scarring in the muscle structure, which can lead to chronic injuries. Almost as dangerous as not stretching is improper stretching!!
“Spreading the word about stretching”
The Philadelphia Inquirer, Aug.4, 2003By Art Carey
As an exercise evangelist, I'm strictly low church. Like cocktail-party Episcopalians, I'm merciful, permissive and promiscuously nice.
I won't damn you for eating Spam, Twinkies or cheese curls. And I give salvation credits for just about any exercise, from making love to working the remote.
Doctrinally, I keep it simple. All I ask is that you observe the Holy Trinity of Fitness: Thou shalt move; thou shalt lift; thou shalt stretch.
Nobody's perfect, of course, and that includes me. With regard to the third commandment, I'm a hypocrite. I hate to stretch. Everything else about exercise is fun. Stretching is work.
My antipathy toward stretching is why I'm racked with arthritis and stagger out of bed like a 90-year-old. I know I can and should do better, but every time I get virtuous about stretching , I wind up feeling worse. Discouraged, I lapse into non- stretching sin. Meanwhile, my muscles grow shorter and tighter.
St. Paul experienced his epiphany on the road to Damascus. Mine occurred a few weeks ago, when I plucked a book out of the stack of lactic-acid literature on my night table. The title caught my eye: The Stark Reality of Stretching (Stark Reality Publishing, $18.95).
I intended to give it a glance before nodding off. I wound up getting hooked and stayed up till the wee hours learning about sarcomeres and myofibrils. In the process, something amazing happened: I began to understand the how and why of stretching . And that understanding has transformed my approach and attitude.
The book's author is Dr. Steven Stark , a Canadian podiatrist who was born in New Mexico and grew up in Texas. In his youth, Stark was an avid jock and spent a lot of time in pain, mainly from repeated groin pulls. For 10 years, he was an amateur and professional boxer. He has gone under the knife eight times because of various athletic injuries.
Dr. Stark, 55, was moved to write the book because he was appalled by widespread ignorance about stretching and the widespread havoc it's causing. Many teen athletes are quitting sports because of chronic pain. They could be cured in weeks, Stark contends, with a proper program of stretching.
"Many doctors know where muscles are and what their primary function is," Stark says, "but they don't know how they work at the structural, molecular level."
It drives him . . . well, stark raving mad when he hears so-called experts recommending "stretches" for the Achilles tendon.
As Stark makes clear in his book, tendons cannot be stretched. In fact, the elasticity of the Achilles tendon is a mere 3 percent.
The appeal of this book is that it fully and graphically explains how muscle works. In a nutshell, stretching is about allowing muscle fibers to take a long, slow slide.
The key word in that sentence is allow. A stretch is not something you make happen. A stretch is something you allow to happen.
The goal is to elongate muscle fibers past their resting length. This packs the muscle with energy so it explodes with power. Plus, longer muscles keep the body balanced and symmetrical and help prevent injury caused by changes in joint position and posture.
"You don't have to be a cripple when you're 65," Stark told me. "Most of the ailments we associate with old age are really the result of structural change, improper muscle function, and poor posture. Most people are crippled not because they get hit by a bus but because of the effects of repetitive microtrauma and the accumulation of scar tissue."
I told Stark about all my hamstring pulls. In sympathy, he shared the Five Golden Rules of Stretching :
Isolate the muscle. Positioning is crucial. You can't stretch the hamstring by standing and bending over from the waist. The muscle can't relax when it's contracting to keep you from toppling over.
Find zero tension. That's when there's no awareness of tension in the muscle because there's no load.
Find the first awareness. Feel the first gentle tension in the muscle as it reflexively contracts against the load. Pushing the muscle harder is counterproductive.
Less is best. The more gentle the initial load on a muscle, the faster the muscle can relax back to its resting length. Only then can the magic, the sliding elongation past resting length, begin.
Allow the loss of tension. Stretches cannot be timed. It's impossible to stretch a muscle in 30 seconds. The gentle tension must be steady and constant for the muscle fibers to relax and slide past their resting length. Be patient. You can't make it happen.
Stark left me with this thought: "The more muscles are used, the more maintenance they require. That maintenance is stretching ."
The alternative: "Think wheelchair," he told me. "Think incontinence. Think knee surgery and hip replacement."
Next week: Steven Stark 's advice for runners.
"Body Language" appears Mondays in The Inquirer. Contact staff writer Art Carey at 215-854-4588 or acarey@phillynews.com.
Dr. Sultan of Stretch
The Philadelphia Inquirer, Aug.11, 2003By Art Carey
Anyone who can overcome my lifelong aversion to stretching is mighty persuasive. Which is why I call Dr. Steven Stark the Sultan of Stretch.
Dr. Stark is a Canadian podiatrist and the author of The Stark Reality of Stretching (Stark Reality Publishing, $18.95). Many of the ills we associate with old age, he contends, are caused by not stretching or by stretching improperly. This makes our muscles tighter and shorter, which can lead to body imbalances, poor posture, and structural breakdown.
Because of my mechanical bent, I like to take stuff apart and see how it works. Stark 's book grabbed me because it explains what needs to happen at the basic biomechanical and biochemical level for a stretch to be effective.
In a nutshell, it's all about allowing the sliding elongation of muscle fibers past their resting length. As we learned last week, you accomplish this by following the Five Golden Rules of Stretching: Isolate the muscle group; find zero tension; feel first awareness; less is best; allow loss of tension.
Many people brag that they don't stretch and don't need to (including some famous elite runners). But after a certain age, unless you're a genetic freak, you won't be able to use and move your body without chronic injury and pain unless you stretch.
"Everybody needs to stretch," Stark says. "If you're living in the 21st century, you spend a good part of the day walking on hard surfaces. And if you walk on hard surfaces without stretching , eventually you're going to wreck your body."
This is particularly true for runners. If Nancy Normal takes 5,000 to 8,000 steps a day, Steve Strider, running for an hour at a nine-minute-mile pace, pounds his joints an additional 8,000 to 9,000 times. And the impact, when moving at a brisk clip, is triple his body weight per square inch.
Show me a runner and I'll show you someone who's always complaining - about low-back pain, pulled hamstrings, sore knees, shin splints, tender Achilles tendons, or that epidemic scourge, plantar fasciitis (inflammation of the band of connective tissue that runs along the bottom of the foot).
None of it has to be, says Stark. "With a program of proper stretching, there's no reason you can't continue running into your 80s and 90s."
That's terrific news. Without my daily run, the demons would prevail and I'd be even crazier. So the other day, I asked Stark what I need to do.
First, he wanted to clear up a misconception: Stretching has nothing to do with flexibility. "You can't use the word flexibility in a sentence about muscle," he said. "Flexibility refers to range of motion across a joint, which is determined by connective tissue such as tendons and ligaments. Stretching is about elongating muscle tissue so that it generates more power and keeps the joints correctly aligned."
Then he laid down the law:
Stretch both before and after running. Correctly stretched muscles will improve your power and performance. Tight muscles crab your stride, throw your joints out of whack, and magnify impact and shock.
Warm up properly. Best warm-up: walking for at least five minutes. The repetitive gentle contractions of walking boost blood flow to the leg's major weight-bearing muscles, enhancing elasticity. Worst warm up: jogging or running slowly. Jogging shortens the stride. This reduces joint range of motion and muscle function, which impairs the body's ability to absorb and dissipate shock (twice that of walking). "Warming up" by jogging is a major cause of shin splints.
Do the right stretches right.
In his book, Stark recommends five primary stretches for the lower body. But he also knows that when we runners are ready to run, we want to run. His advice: If you do only one pre-run stretch, stretch the calf muscles.
Reason: The calf muscles (gastrocnemius and soleus) are critical. When you walk or run, they determine joint position and stride length. They're also first to shorten from repetitive use and fatigue.
"About 90 percent of runners don't finish their stride," Stark told me.
Does it matter? You bet. When your calf muscles are tight, your heel leaves the ground after your foot fully pronates (flattens to decelerate and absorb shock) but before it has the chance to resupinate (when the arch lifts and the knee rotates away from the body). In time, this can lead to plantar fasciitis and knee pain.
In his book, Stark shows how to do two nifty calf stretches. Cardinal rule: Be gentle and be patient. Allow the stretch; don't force it. If you feel tension behind your knee, you're pushing too hard. The muscle will reflexively contract to protect itself, delaying the relaxation necessary for elongation.
Does his approach to stretching work? Ask Avril Douglas, age 56.
Seven years ago, when she came to Stark , she was a virtual cripple, so broken down she was ready to hang up her spikes, he says.
Now, since practicing Stark 's method, she holds every Canadian record in her age group. In the recent masters track and field world championships, she competed in the 100-, 200-, 400-, 800- and 1,500-meter runs.
She won gold in every event.
"Body Language" appears Mondays in The Inquirer. Contact staff writer Art Carey at 215-854-4588 or acarey@phillynews.com.