The stretching journey – Pt 1: My journey

In this new millennium, at the start of this 21 Century AD, the physical quality of flexibility and the training method to achieve it is without doubt the most vilified physical quality, potentially  on the verge of extinction.  The aim of this article series is to explore how we arrived at this point.  Part 1 is dedicated to understanding how I reached my conclusions about stretching.  In doing this, I share the following:

• My personal stretching journey
• My professional stretching journey
• My publishing stretching journey

My personal stretching journey

In the 1960 my first strength training coach in my home country Papua New Guinea, the late Iwila Jacobs[1], did not teach me stretching. It’s fair to say that stretching has not played a big part in most people’s interpretation of bodybuilding. To put it another way, no magazine space was wasted on pictures of bodybuilders stretching.

In the early 1970s, upon arriving in Australia for high school I took up track and field as a sport. This was my first exposure to stretching.

My personal history in stretching goes back to the 1970s, in my high school years. During track and field amongst other sports I was exposed to stretching. I do not recall any negative connotations or concerns in that decade towards stretching or flexibility training. I suspect doing stretches would not have turned anyone’s head in that decade. [2]

I was to learn later that this is a sport that has a long history of commitment to stretching. Or like too many sports, it did before the world turned.

I liked the days in the 70s when no one really cared, no one even talked about it; we just did it, and no one had an opinion on that; they did or you didn’t do it. And since then, every decade, we’ve gone through a new reason why not. [3]

In the late 1970s I took up the Korean martial art Tae Kwon Do, under a Rhee family from South Korea. And it was there that my stretching was taken to another level. Again, this may have changed since the world turned, but during my time in that and other martial arts, stretching was just what you did.

In the 1980s during university, I participated in a variety of sports, some of which – such as martial arts – promoted flexibility training as paramount. [4]

After arriving at university in Australia in 1980 I had access to the best strength training environment I had been exposed to in my short life. And I grabbed that opportunity with both hands so to speak.

I was the product of the 1970s, and I was the product of track and field and martial arts, both of which were sports leaders in the embracement of flexibility. So, I had a reasonably high level of personal involvement, commitment and competence in this physical quality. [5]

However, I didn’t leave behind what track and field, and martial arts had exposed me to. I took it forward and for me, personally, stretching then strength training was how I did it.

I took this value into my competitive training and competing in other sports in the second half of the 1980s – competitive powerlifting and weightlifting, rugby union etc. I noticed people, looked, some asked questions, but no-one really cared. [6]

It was no different than say my Tae Kwon Do training. We would warm up, then stretch, then train.

If you trained in the 1980s and you were stretching and someone walked past you, they wouldn’t even know you were stretching. They were oblivious to us stretching. They couldn’t give a rat’s ass. [7]

It was quite a sight. I would be lying on the ground out of the way in the strength training facility stretching. It was just what I did. No one else I have met in strength training had my level of commitment. Most weightlifters and powerlifters, even some bodybuilders, did stretch in that decade. But if they didn’t, they were not passing judgement or comment on what I was doing.

Move forward to the 1980s, and there I was, stretching happily, endlessly, in the gym, as a competitive powerlifter. And no one cared. There were other athletes around doing their own thing, and no one cared. I would read the academic textbooks about flexibility. The recommendations were very simple and non-controversial.  There was no mixed message. You did it, you didn’t do it, no one cares. [8]

My professional journey

When I started training others in the early 1980s, I brought stretching along with strength training.

I was further unique, in that I chose to bring flexibility training along with strength training. From the early1980s, I would not provide strength training – either in program design or in supervision of training – without concurrent flexibility training. That was my starting point. Length and strength. [9]

And no-one cared, no one noticed, no one pushed back. I was introducing at the same time two things that most athletes in Australia in the 1980s and 1990s had not done before – including professional athletes’- serious strength training and serious stretching.

When I was teaching stretching in the 80s, … no one gave a rat’s ass. No one really cared. [10]

I was doing it with athletes in all sports. I was doing it with up to 20 different sports at the elite level during the late 80s and 90s. And no one really objected to it. No one said anything. No one complained. The coaches probably struggled a little bit because I was eating into their time, and that’s a story in itself. But, in essence, my conclusions were shaped by the athlete’s response, their performance and injury prevention response to my application. And I formed a number of hypotheses during the late 80s, in particular, about the relationship between stretching and injury prevention. And I implemented them, and I studied the results, you know, in the real-world laboratory sense, in particular throughout the early 90s, when I gained a lot more control in the training process.

And by the mid-90s, I formed an incredibly effective approach to flexibility, and I formed, by then, the solid belief that flexibility is the most important physical quality, and the physical quality that will have more impact upon all other physical qualities, and also on the quality of life going forwards. [11]

In the late 1980s I took my professional skills to North America. I noticed that my commitment to stretching was significantly more than what my Canadian and American counterparts were doing.

In the environments where I was collaborating in a hands-on sense, I noticed this was somewhat uncomfortable for my colleagues, but I didn’t understand why. After all, wasn’t what I was offering superior and best for the athletes.  For the first time I noticed pushback.

In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s I witnessed the rise of a paradigm that suggested you shouldn’t stretch too much because if you got too flexible, you would be injury prone i.e. your increased flexibility would result in a higher incidence or chance of being injured.  [12]

In the second half of the 1990s this negatively had spread back to Australia. As an example, I left a team at the end of 1995 and returned two seasons later. Same team, same players. Yet their ‘pre-training static stretching is making us weak’ attitude was a shock to me. After all, what I had done with them prior to leaving resulted in championships. In my time away they had gone down the new age route – and in two seasons dropped 10 places on the ladder to third last!

By the late 1990s/early 2000’s the stretching paradigm was that static stretching had an acute (short-term) impact of reducing your strength, so if you want to do it, only do it afterward the workout.  This paradigm suggested more dynamic or PNF (i.e. proprio-neuromuscular facilitation, a special mix of static and dynamic stretching) type stretching should be done before the workout, but again only short duration holds were apparently needed. [13]

What had significantly contributed to putting athletes on the podium and champions for team was suddenly unacceptable.

And after 15 years of doing it, by the mid-90s, something had happened. What was that?  Suddenly I learned of a new theory.  Stretching was bad. [14]

It was tough to understand. In 1989 I gave the Canadian men’s national Alpine Ski team a series of supervised stretching sessions. They loved it and wanted more. They got more over the next decade of my involvement. The Sports Science Director saw it and didn’t complain. It contributed to a positive outcome during that decade. Yet post 2000 the sports science director aligned with the new paradigm in his public presentations. It was hard to comprehend.

My publishing journey

I published extensively on the benefit of stretching from the early 1990s onwards. [15] [16][17] [18] Initially in Australia, and then in the late 1990s my writings were getting more exposure overseas, in particular the United States and Canada – in both professional as well as lay publications such as Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness and t-mag.com. The latter was one of the pioneers of online bodybuilding magazine, and the more public facing nature of this new medium gave me increased exposure to the thoughts and values of the masses, including through the extensive Q&A columns I wrote for the best part of a decade.

It was through this medium that I gained a sense of the shift in the paradigm to a negative sentiment towards stretching, especially pre-training static stretching.

I had as you might expect been promoting my perspective on the role and value of stretching to the readership, and then the ‘switch was flicked’ shortly after I began getting traction with the audience about my approach to stretching.

I was getting questions in my Q&A columns such as:

How do you feel now that you stretching message has been shown to cause weakness?

Here are some real examples:

You seem to prefer stretching before the workout. I have heard another coach speak several times and he is very set on not doing static stretching before the workout as it makes one weaker. I have read up on the subject, and it appears to be true.

I have seen that you recommend stretching before a workout (against many others’ opinions). 

I’m really confused about stretching.  As I mentioned to you in the past, I’m a trainer with ISSA and they say that stretching before you exercise can limit strength. 

Why do you recommend stretching before a workout?  Isn’t that considered “bad” these days? 

What do you think of the theory that says that pre-workout stretching kills the stretch reflex and reduces strength?

It was literally an overnight embracing of a new value set about stretching by people who, let’s be straight – were not talking from experience!

From 1995 to 2010, for 15 years I was mocked for my position. People thought I was fucking crazy. I do not know a single person in the world who has clearly stated, this is what I do, and this is why. No one else would do that because they don’t have the balls to think for themselves. … from 1980 to 1995, no one gave a rat’s ass about flexibility. So, the first 15 years, no one gave a rat’s ass. Next 15 years. They wanted to burn me at the stake, and I was ostracized on that point extensively. [19]

 

** The Laze Man’s Guide to Stretching! e-book is now available here! Education and programs for abdominal training, the first edition in a new series called the Get Buffed! Specialization Series.

 

References 

[1] King, I., 2026, Where it all began, KSI Blog, 18 May 2026

[2] King, I., 2011, Stretching debate, I Form, Magazine, Feb 2011

[3] King, I., 2010, Legacy Seminar, Gold Coast AUS, 26 April 2010

[4] King, I., 2011, Stretching debate, I Form, Magazine, Feb 2011

[5] King, I., 2019, How did you develop your approach to flexibility, Off the Record #50, 31 July 2019

[6] King, I., 2011, Stretching debate, I Form, Magazine, Feb 2011

[7] King, I., 2012, Ian King Live in London, 29 Feb 2012

[8] King, I., 2010, Barbells & Bullshit, Pt 3 of 10 – Flexibility an example of influence on physical qualities, DVD/Audio Series

[9] King, I., 2026, Get Buffed! V – Get Optimally Buffed! Ch 5 – Pillar 3: Stability

[10] King, I., 2011, How to Write Seminar Series – Pt 1 – How do I ensure balance in my strength training to prevent injuries? Nerang Qld Aust., Sun 15th May 2011

[11] King, I., 2012, KSI Coaching Program Level 2 Foundations, Unit 4 – Theory of flexibility development, (Video) 17 May 2012

[12] King, I., 2002, Get Buffed! II – Get More Buffed! Ch. 8 – The stretch – a performance advantage!

[13] King, I., 2002, Get Buffed! II – Get More Buffed! Ch. 8 – The stretch – a performance advantage!

[14] King, I., 2010, Barbells & Bullshit, Pt 3 of 10 – Flexibility an example of influence on physical qualities, DVD/Audio Series

[15] King, I., 1991, Level 1 Strength and Conditioning Coach Course, Australian Strength and Conditioning Association. (Course)

[16] King, I., 1991, Level 2 Strength and Conditioning Coach Course, Australian Strength and Conditioning Association.  (Course)

[17] King, I., 1994, The Flexibility Video Series – Part 1, 2 and 3

[18] King, I., 1994, Flexibility Training: Upgrading its Importance in the Talented Squash Player’s Program, Presentation at Squash Australia’s National Coaching Conference, Melbourne, Australia. 19-21 Aug 1994 (Presentation)

[19] King, I., 2011, How to Write Seminar Series – Pt 1 – How do I ensure balance in my strength training to prevent injuries? Nerang Qld Aust., Sun 15th May 2011