How does the Overton window apply to flexibility training?
I first came across the phrase Overton window while doomscrolling through a Washington Post opinion piece titled, “That fresh air is coming from the Overton window Ocasio-Cortez threw open.” The headline pulled me in and suddenly I was neck-deep in a fascinating dive into how Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was shaking up the usual political chatter by dropping ideas once considered too radical for polite company.
If you’ve never heard of it before, the Overton window maps out the set of policies that society deems okay to talk about out loud at any given moment. It’s named after Joseph Overton, and it isn’t fixed. It slides and shifts as people change their minds about what counts as reasonable. If the last ten years of the political landscape in the United States are anything to go by, we can confidently say politicians and media figures play a huge part in nudging the window around, sometimes by dragging wild ideas into the light until they start to feel normal (Trump’s “joking-not-joking” talk of running for a third term, anyone?).
The stuff sitting outside the window is the land of “no way,” where proposals go to get ignored. Inside the window is where the real debates happen. And sometimes, to crack the window wider or slide it over, activists or thinkers throw in ideas that initially seem outrageous, just to reset the frame.
Once an idea climbs into that acceptable range, it’s game on. It can gather steam, shape conversations, and maybe even become law. If you understand how the Overton window works, you get a clearer view of how public opinion morphs over time, and how yesterday’s fringe theories have become today’s headline.
I’ve talked before about how I try really hard to steer clear of politics when I write about stretching and flexibility. It’s not that I don’t have opinions (oh, I definitely do). It’s that I want this space to stay focused, grounded in science, and helpful for anyone looking to move better and feel better. Politics can throw a wrench into that. It muddies the message and turns people away when all they really want is practical advice that works.
So, you might be wondering: if I’m so committed to avoiding political tangents, why am I bringing up the Overton window, which is usually more of a political theory thing than a stretching thing?
Well, the Overton window is a useful way of determining what society thinks is cool to talk about without giving you side-eye. When we slap that idea onto stretching and flexibility, it shows how our brains can catch up with our bodies (eventually). At first, hitting front splits or folding into a deep backbend feels like wizardry or circus-level nonsense. But the more we see it, the more it sinks in. Trainers, athletes, and even everyday humans keep showing us that, yeah, this is doable, and actually pretty awesome. Slowly, what felt extreme starts to look kind of normal. And boom: the goalposts move. People get curious, then they get motivated, and suddenly they're chasing stretch goals they once laughed at. That shift in mindset is powerful. It fuels progress, boosts consistency, and rewrites what we think our bodies can do. As culture chills out and says, “Sure, go for it,” our physical limits stretch right along with it.
The Overton window has six categories: unthinkable, radical, acceptable, sensible, popular, and policy. The idea that static passive stretching is somehow harmful lives deep in the "Are you serious right now?" unthinkable category. This idea is so dumb, it's like shouting at a cloud and expecting it to holler back. Sure, a few loud (and weird) corners of the internet cling to this take like it's gospel, but they're usually echo chambers built on groupthink and pseudoscience (cough, Functional Patterns, cough).
The people who actually know what they're talking about, i.e., legitimate scientists, consistently stand behind static passive stretching as safe and useful when done right. Saying it’s dangerous isn't just wrong. It’s facepalm-level nonsense. Static passive stretching has a near zero injury rate. And I’m only writing “near” because there will always be the chance that some well-intentioned subject in a study stretches too hard and causes an ouchie, but so far that hasn’t been reported in any study that I’ve read (and I’ve read thousands). This kind of claim ignores mountains of peer-reviewed studies and decades of applied practice. Giving this idea airtime is like entertaining flat Earth theory during a geology class. Let’s call it what it is: terrible information, dressed up in fearmongering. It doesn't belong anywhere near a serious conversation about fitness, health, or how humans move.
In the radical category lives the idea that static passive stretching before workouts always tanks performance. It's one of those theories that has some evidence supporting it in research settings, but when you shine a light on it in real world training practices, it doesn't hold up all too well. The scientific data's inconsistent, and it definitely doesn’t line up with how people actually train.
Yes, there are studies that show performance dips after holding a static passive stretch for a full minute or more right before maxing out a lift. But the anti-stretching brigade cherry-picks those and inflates them into blanket statements that warp how we understand stretching. Meanwhile, across the world, people are throwing some static passive stretches into their warm-ups and seeing real benefits, like smoother movement, fewer injuries, and more flexibility. You know, stuff that actually matters when you’re training.
Lab setups don’t match real-world training. Stretching for 60 seconds and then jumping straight into a max-effort squat is not how most people warm up outside of research studies. But a fighter doing a quick 20-second stretch for their hip flexors is not losing power. They’re kicking higher, faster, and with way more control. Short stretches (under 30 seconds) are super common, and they don’t kill performance. In fact, they often help by loosening up opposing muscles, letting the ones you’re using fire harder and faster.
But this myth that all pre-exercise static passive stretching survives. It keeps popping up like a glitch in the Matrix, sparking arguments and making people second-guess their routines. But it simply doesn’t have the weight of real-world experience or enough consistent science behind it to become mainstream (as much as the anti-stretchers might wish otherwise). It’s a radical claim, held up by selective evidence, and totally out of step with what athletes and coaches see in day-to-day training.
Next is the acceptable range of the Overton window. Here, we can comfortably place the idea that dynamic active stretching is generally better than static passive stretching before a workout. This is a topic that has a bunch of good research backing it up. Sure, it hasn’t become the gold standard across the board or made its way into every fitness training manual, but it is definitely gaining ground.
Dynamic active stretching is not just waving your arms around and calling it a warm-up. It involves actively moving your body through its full range of motion. You’re waking up muscles and joints, increasing activity within the nervous system, getting your internal engine humming, and syncing your limbs like a well-coded machine. All of that means you perform better. And while there’s not a great deal of high-quality research to back up this next point, anecdotal evidence certainly suggests that you’re less likely to tweak something you’ll regret halfway through your set.
Static passive stretching also has its time and place (yes, including in the warm-up). Doing it right before high-intensity work can temporarily drop your strength and power, but not by a huge amount (usually between 0.1 – 9% of your maximum possible isometric force. Yes, the data really are that insignificant). It’s not going to wreck your day, but if you want the best bang for your warm-up buck, it’s a great idea to include dynamic active stretching immediately after any static passive stretching, and immediately before the main task of the workout.
In the sensible category sits the notion that stretching helps you perform better and keeps (some) injuries at bay t lines up with solid data and is a staple in gyms, studios, and training rooms pretty much everywhere. There’s a mountain of research confirming that stretching boosts your joint’s range of motion. If you stacked all the research papers demonstrating that stretching improves flexibility one on top of the other, they would be taller than Mount Everest (probably). That added flexibility is a game-changer, especially if you’re doing something that asks your body to move in big, dynamic ways, like gymnastics, dance, or martial arts. When you move more freely, you move better. Smooth, efficient movement looks good, and it means you’re probably performing better too. In sports that award points for greater ranges of motion (such as splits in gymnastics and high kicks in karate), greater flexibility means you literally perform better than a less-flexible person.
Flexibility training helps your muscles and tendons handle greater stress compared to if they were less compliant. (Compliance is the inverse of stiffness, which is the intrinsic resistance to stretch exhibited by our soft tissues.) Stretching, whether you’re doing it while holding a pose or while moving, can ease tightness and restore balance where it’s needed. This can translate to a reduced risk of specific types of injury, namely strains, in which the myofascial unit is subjected to high stretching forces (tension).
The idea that regular stretching boosts your health sits squarely in the popular zone of the Overton window. This is where ideas go when society not only nods along but throws confetti and starts a hashtag. Stretching is done by more than elite athletes or bendy dancers these days. Doctors, fitness coaches, and wellness influencers are waving the “stretch more” flag with greater frequency. They refer to it as essential for staying flexible, dodging injuries, and even keeping stress at bay. You’ll stumble across stretching routines just about everywhere: on health blogs, in your gym app, and even slapped on posters in local fitness studios. Heck, there’s now even entire apps dedicated to the practice. That kind of exposure doesn’t happen unless the public is all in.
What’s more, the medical and scientific community has jumped on board. Health professionals now recommend stretching as a daily must, especially if you spend half your life hunched over a desk. Their support locks the idea into the popular category with seatbelts. When your doctor says, “You should stretch more,” it suddenly feels not just okay, but almost mandatory (admit it – your doctor has told you to do this at least once). More workplaces are scheduling stretch breaks. Schools have absorbed it into physical education lessons. Classes that centre on flexibility, like yoga and Pilates, are booming. All of that signals a clear cultural shift: people really care about flexibility, posture, and keeping their joints from turning into angry fossils.
We could even go so far as to say the idea of stretching for better health has levelled up so much that it has officially hit the policy stage of the Overton window. In other words, it’s way more than a simple fitness trend. Institutions and public health polices are backing it, hard.
In the UK, the National Health Service (NHS) is all in. They recommend flexibility exercises, including stretching, to fix your posture, ease random aches, and cut your risk of injuries. It is like a health upgrade, especially for older adults, helping them stay agile and avoid nasty falls. The NHS even suggests you work these exercises into your regular routine at least twice a week.
In the United States, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also fly the flexibility flag. Their physical activity guidelines put stretching right up there, saying it helps you crush daily activities and keeps your physical function running at peak performance. Basically, stretching = life skills.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) is on board too. They bang the drum for physical activity, stressing the importance of exercises that boost flexibility and balance. They give a special shout-out to older adults, noting how these moves can prevent falls and keep people independent longer. Pretty awesome, right?
How do you feel about flexibility’s current position in the Overton window? Do you think it gets enough attention? How about too much? Let me and other readers know by leaving a comment, or reach out to me at dan(at)flexibilityresearch(dot)com.
Yours in flexibility,
Dan