Stretch Labs Assisted Stretch Sessions Review

Stretch Labs offers a one time initial stretch session so you can try it out. Sometimes Stretch Labs will send out mailers with a free session, though more often you can book an initial 50 minute session for about $49 to check it out for yourself. If you're reading this blog post there's probably a good chance you learned about Stretch Labs either from a penny mailer to your home or through an email or maybe even an Instagram post and you might be thinking about attentding an intro session. So here's how it works...

Contact your local Stretch Labs by phone or fill out a contact form on their website and schedule your initial session. In terms of what to wear, you'll want to wear something which will allow you to be mobile for the stretches, for women something like yoga pants, for gentlemen gym shorts or basketball shorts. If you have them you may want to wear compression shorts to keep yourself covered during stretches, but not necessary. The other thing Stretch Labs requires is a pair of grip socks, grip socks are basically yoga socks that have some type of rubber grip on the bottom of the feet. You could find them on Amazon, I actually found a two pack of them at my local Walmart for $2.68, so they're pretty cheap.

You'll show up to your first session a few minutes early to sign your waivers, you'll meet your Stretchologist, and you'll get right into the session. Now something I was wondering was what type of training or credentials do stretchologists have. For my session I had a gentlement who was a physical therapist by day and who worked as a stretchologist as a second job, however some stretchologists are not necessarily massage therapists or physical therapists but go through an 80 hour training directly from Stretch Labs themselves. 

The session starts out with you standing in front of a computer screen for an assessment. You'll raise your hands above your head and do three squats, the sensor in this machine will evaluate you on a number of factors such as activation, flexibility and other factors and will assign you four scores. It will also show the body mechanics of your squat and where you put pressure and weight on your legs or knees when doing them. From there you'll head over to the benches where your stretch session will take place.

I don't consider myself to be especially flexible so I was a little concerned about being stretched too much or getting hurt, however it wasn't painful and everything went great. In regards to how they stretch you, for any given stretch they'll tell you to notify them when your at about 60% of your capacity or what you can tolerate, they'll hold it for a second, then ask you to push against them and provide some resistance, and then complete the rest of the stretch and after activating that muscle the second time you can typically stretch considerably further. They'll go through pretty much your entire body from legs to hips and core to shoulders and neck. The intro session will last 50 minutes.

In terms of the actual effect and if it was worthwhile, I'd sort of compare it to a massage. At the end of a massage your relaxed, you feel loose and you feel like a noodle, you get a lot of that feeling after a stretch session. The main difference is as opposed to feeling maybe relaxed and tired after a stretch session you feel awake, alert and very liquid, you have a bounce in your step, and everything feels loose, I could see it being a great thing to do just prior to a workout to loosen up.